NORTH KOREA has turned to Twitter and YouTube to step up its propaganda struggle with South Korea and the US as it comes under growing international pressure after the sinking of a southern warship.
Although curious web surfers have been checking out the isolated state’s offerings, the North intended message may not be getting through, with South Korea blocking links from northern tweets and some viewers posting mocking comments on the videos and messages.
The US, however, welcomed North Korea’s move to social media, with the State Department saying Pyongyang should allow its citizens free access to the sites. North Korea, one of the world’s most secretive nations, blocks internet access for most of its 24 million citizens, although it has a cadre of elite hackers.
Uriminzokkiri, a website run by North Korea’s propaganda agency – the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea – last week announced the launch of a Twitter feed and a dedicated section of videos on YouTube. The Twitter feed, under the name Uriminzok, “our nation” in Korean, has attracted more than 6,000 followers in less than a week as curious social networkers rushed to get a peek at messages from the Hermit Kingdom.
Yesterday, Uriminzok tweeted dozens of messages linked to official propaganda reports on Uriminzokkiri. The messages, which echo Pyongyang’s official news media, threaten “merciless retaliation” against South Korea and the US, calling them “warmongers”. A recent Twitter post by North Korea compared South Korean president Lee Myung-bak to a “prostitute of the US”.
Seoul blocks about 65 websites linked to the North and bans its citizens from communicating with North Koreans directly, but has not blocked access to the YouTube feed, which launched last month.
South Koreans who try to follow links on North Korea’s Twitter messages receive a warning against “illegal content” and have been blocked from following links from the tweets to Uriminzokkiri.
“People would have to bear in mind that they could be violating the law when they tweet with the [Northern] account,” said the South’s Unification Ministry.
Others seem to be taking the messages less seriously. One viewer, under the username FRwritings, wrote that northern leader Kim Jong-il was “on Twitter to promote his hairdo”. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)
