[LINK] "The tyrant who tweets"

[rfmcdonald]

This news article, in The Globe and Mail and written by Mark MacKinnon, certainly got my attention.

His new nemesis, Barack Obama, is on Twitter. So are many of the movie stars that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is known to admire. So perhaps it's no surprise that the regime led by the self-described film buff and Internet fan has also joined the fast-moving social networking site.

North Korea has for decades been the most isolated country on the planet, with almost no links to the outside world. The Internet can be accessed only by the most powerful and well-connected in Pyongyang, while ordinary North Koreans aren't allowed to possess mobile phones.

Which is why the discovery Monday that the North Korean government has a Twitter page caused a stir in the world known as the Twitterverse.

"First they got nukes. Next level: Twitter account" tweeted Mikaël Hardy, a French engineer living in the Chinese city of Shenzhen and one of the first to discover that Mr. Kim's regime had gone online using the account kcna_dprk.

Word spread fast. Within hours, more than 300 people were "following" the North Korean Twitterer, including this reporter. To my surprise, the kcna_dprk immediately returned the compliment and deigned to follow my postings as well.

[. . .]

Despite the apparently earnest nature of whomever was behind the news agency's Twitter page, they were bombarded with lighthearted and semi-serious banter as soon as their presence was noticed.

"They could have at least Tweeted that they were set for an N-test"suggested one Japanese contributor.

"@kcna_dprk Make kimchi not war" tweeted someone living in Shanghai.

Some Twitterers were slightly unnerved to see that the silent North Korean was quick to "follow" anyone who subscribed to their Twitter feed, particularly South Koreans.

The Twitter page is here.