South Korea has an aggressive effort to block its citizens from accessing the North’s Korean-language online content. To break past the firewall, the North jumped into social media this summer, according to an U.S. intelligence report disclosed today by Public Intelligence. The move was announced by a North Korean website called Urminjokkkiri that’s administered out of China.
South Koreans visiting Urminjokkkiri can find a link to proxy router programs to help them evade the firewall, according to the August report from the Director of National Intelligence’s Open Source Center, “suggesting a connection with efforts to neutralize South Korean censorship.” Pyongyang’s official Twitter account — which has over 10,000 followers — uses TinyURL links, so users don’t get directed to blocked North Korean web addresses.
A mock North Korean Urminjokkkiri account on Facebook is almost entirely blank, except for a message: “THE IMPERIALIST AMERIKAN CENSORS HAVE BLOCKED PUBLISHING RIGHTS, PLEASE KEEP UP GOOD FIGHT FOR DEAR LEADER!” Ridicule: the impenetrable firewall.
Read more at Wired
