After the launch of North Korea’s YouTube channel (majority of which are postings of government propaganda) the country has created a Twitter account. It’s nice to see that North Korea is taking a steps towards joining the global internet community, next step, joining the rest of the global community. BBC News reports:
Last Thursday, the North Koreans created a Twitter account – @uriminzok, a shortened version of a Korean word that translates as “our people”.
It already has more than 4,500 followers.
The move to Twitter follows last month’s launch of a North Korean YouTube channel, which now hosts close to 80 videos.
“The North Koreans are technologically literate,” says Hazel Smith, a long-time North Korea researcher at Cranfield University in Britain.
Ms Smith says that the North Koreans have been investing heavily in information technology now for more than 20 years.
“They have a cadre of people who can use modern social networking sites. But the problem for them is the content,” she said.
On the North Korean YouTube channel, that content includes a lot of propaganda laced with bombastic rhetoric; the United States and South Korea are often called “warmongers”.
In a recent Twitter post, the North Koreans said the current administration in South Korea was “a prostitute” of the US.
“As far as content goes, there’s nothing new as far as I can tell,” says Sung-Yoon Lee, professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston.
Mr Lee says that the agency responsible for the videos and the tweets is a major arm of the country’s ruling communist party.
“They’ve been putting out stuff like this for years now,” said Mr Lee.
Continues at BBC …
