North Korea’s recent embrace of Twitter has prompted a game of online cat-and-mouse with Seoul, as authorities in the South battle to stop their citizens following links to Pyongyang’s propaganda Web site.
North Korea has used its Twitter feed, opened under the name @uriminzok, to post links to anti-Seoul and anti-US statements on its Uriminzokkiri Web site www.uriminzokkiri.com.
Seoul has already blocked access to the Uriminzokkiri site, but Pyongyang has started putting different addresses on its Twitter page so users can bypass the block.
It has even put programs on the Uriminzokkiri homepage that users can download to help them break the block and enter the site, which is Pyongyang’s official Internet mouthpiece.
Even if it is only for curiosity value, Pyongyang’s Twitter account — which is only in Korean — has already attracted more than 8,600 followers.
The normally reclusive North also launched its own channel on popular video-sharing Web site YouTube last month, uploading clips praising leader Kim Jong-il and denying its role in the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
The South’s telecommunication authorities said they are monitoring the North’s Twitter account “around the clock” to make sure its citizens do not view the banned propaganda Web site.
“We are constantly monitoring the North’s Twitter account, to see if it posts any links using new domains,” an official at the Korea Communications Commission said yesterday.
He said: “Whenever the North uses different routes, we will block them so that no South Korean followers will get access to the Web site.”
Under the anti-communist National Security Law, South Korea prohibits unauthorized communication with North Koreans and offenders can be jailed.
The South’s Unification Ministry on Wednesday warned of possible punishment for local Web users seeking to “reply” and “retweet” on the North Korean Twitter page.
The US on Tuesday offered North Korea an online welcome to Twitter, but warned the regime it might wind up with more than it bargained for by entering the connected world.
The US State Department’s chief spokesman, Philip Crowley, used his own account on the popular micro-blogging site to “welcome North Korea to Twitter and the networked world.”
“The North Korean government has joined Twitter, but is it prepared to allow its citizens to be connected as well?” Crowley said in another tweet.
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