In addition to running several websites in foreign languages, North Korea also has a presence on Twitter and YouTube.

As has been widely reported in the press, it would appear that the Korean Central News Agency has launched a website with articles in English and Spanish. The presence of the site was just picked up today, however, and its authenticity has not yet been confirmed.

Given the tight Internet security present in the country and the site’s content, I’d be surprised if it were all a hoax. Articles like Dangerous U.S.-S.Korea War Confab Under Fire and Gift to Kim Jong Il from Chairman of Hungarian Party seem like pretty authentic propaganda to me.

Yet the site contains many broken links, so one can legitimately wonder if it is under construction – or “under deconstruction.”

The fact is that North Korea is not a total stranger to the Internet. The government runs an official website in English, and, strangely, Norwegian. (Links to the Spanish and Italian versions of the site are not operating at the moment.) The site even hosts a bizarrely capitalistic souvenir shop.

Even more surprisingly, North Korea is getting into social networking. It has a Twitter stream – in Korean only, for the moment – and a YouTube channel, also in Korean.

Will the Hermit Kingdom be opening up English social networking sites anytime soon? That remains to be seen.

Betty Carlson

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