North Korea’s propaganda machine has leaped into the 21st century with a new Twitter account, hot on the heels of its foray into video with clips posted on YouTube.
The secretive regime has begun micro-blogging under the name @uriminzok, with a number of posts pointing its few dozen followers to anti-Seoul and anti-US statements on the country’s official Web site.
South Korea blocks the site and few in North Korea have access even to a computer.
One tweet dismissed accusations that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, another criticized US-led sanctions on North Korea and Iran.
Most followers posted derisive comments in Korean.
Last month it opened an account with YouTube, uploading video clips which praised leader Kim Jong-il and denying its role in the sinking.
North Korea operates an army of elite hackers.
South Korea’s spy agency has said that the North was behind cyber attacks that briefly paralyzed the Web sites of South Korean and US government agencies and commercial organizations last year.
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