North Korea now blocking Facebook, Twitter
Communist dictatorship worried about spread of information on Internet
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA— North Korea has officially announced it is blocking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and South Korean websites in a move underscoring its concern with the spread of online information.
The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications announcement was posted this week at the country’s main mobile service provider, Koryolink, and other places serving Internet users.
Very few North Koreans have Internet access. Typically, they can see only a sealed-off, government-sanctioned intranet.
But foreigners had previously been able to surf the web with almost no overt restrictions, though most likely with behind-the-scenes monitoring of their Internet activities.
The new restrictions will make it more difficult for visitors or the small community of foreign residents in North Korea to post real-time information about the country to the outside world, and will further limit the ability of North Koreans with Internet access to view information about their country posted elsewhere. The government announcement named YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America and South Korean media sites as specific examples of what it is blocking “for a certain period of time.”
It also said gambling and “sex and adult websites” have been blocked.
Facebook and Twitter had been informally blocked for months and could not be accessed Friday in a web search from Pyongyang. The announcement added that anyone who tries to hack onto such sites, access them in an “improper” way or distribute “anti-republic data” from them will be subject to punishment under North Korean law. It did not say what the punishment would be.
The new North Korean restrictions are similar to Internet censorship in neighbouring China, which allows more access in general but also maintains strict bans on sites that Beijing deems politically sensitive or socially harmful.
In June last year, warnings began appearing on Instagram accounts in North Korea that claimed access to the popular photo-sharing app was being denied for “harmful content.”
Access to other sites was also denied with a screen notification say- ing, “Warning! You can’t connect to this website because it’s in blacklist site.”
Instagram was not on the new list of officially banned sites and was functioning normally.
Meanwhile, South Korea says that North Korea fired a surface-to-air missile into waters off its east coast facing Japan, in the latest show of defiance while global leaders were meeting in Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit.
A short-range missile was fired at around 12:45 p.m. Friday from South Hamgyong province in the country’s northeastern area, a spokesman at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said by phone. South Korea’s military is closely monitoring the situation and is prepared for any provocation from the North, the spokesman said. The regime in Pyongyang has launched a series of ballistic missiles in recent weeks, including one that flew 800 kilometres on March18, in a protest against growing international pressure and against ongoing joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.
South Korean President Park Geun Hye met with U.S. President Barack Obama and with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss co-operation in the face of rising prospects of a nuclear weapons threat from North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to continue to test nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, the country’s official media reported March 15. With files from Bloomberg