YouTube shuts down N. Korea govt channel

seoul: YouTube has cut off access to a state-run North Korean propaganda channel, as the US seeks to impose tougher sanctions following Pyongyang’s recent nuclear and missile tests.

The shutdown of Uriminzokkiri, which regularly posted video footage boasting of the North’s nuclear and missile programmes and others praising the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un, was confirmed on Saturday.

“This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines,” said the video-sharing website.

YouTube gives no details on reasons why accounts are closed down, or for how long, but advertising revenue generated by the accounts could violate US trade sanctions.

Academics use footage from the channels of missile launches and visits to factories by Kim to gain rare insights into the progress of the country’s weapons programmes.

“Tracking and digitally reconstructing events is going to be more difficult as these accounts get deleted,” Scott Lafoy, a Washingtonbased satellite imagery analyst, told NK News.

Last month, Uriminzokkiri published a video featuring the two sons of James Joseph Dresnok, in which they said their father – the only US soldier known still to be living in North Korea after defecting more than five decades ago – had died last year pledging loyalty to the “great leader Kim Jong-un”.

In July, it hosted a video featuring Lim Ji-hyun, a female defector in her 20s who arrived in Seoul in 2014 and soon became a public figure, before apparently returning to the North from the “hell” of the capitalist South.

Uriminzokkiri’s other social media accounts remained active on Saturday.