Technology, North Korea | featured news

Hackers apparently broke into at least two of North Korea's government-run online sites Thursday, as tensions rose on the Korean Peninsula. The North's Uriminzokkiri Twitter and Flickr accounts stopped sending out content typical of that posted by the regime in Pyongyang, such as photos of North's leader Kim Jong Un meeting with military officials.

"Hello world from comms center in (hash)Pyongyang." That Twitter missive, sent Monday from Koryolink's main service center in downtown Pyongyang using my iPhone, marked a milestone for North Korea: It was believed to be the first tweet sent from a cellphone using the country's new 3G mobile data service.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is urging North Korea to shed its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the Internet or risk being left behind economically....

Executive chairman Eric Schmidt is accompanying former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson on a "private humanitarian mission." The State Department wishes that they'd stayed home.

The US state department says a planned visit to North Korea by Google chairman Eric Schmidt is not "particularly helpful".

Everyone's made a joke they thought was funny only to see it fall flat, but Park Jung-geun's attempt at humor could see him jailed for up to seven years in South Korea. Park, a photographer by profession, re-tweeted some messages from North Korea's official twitter feed, such as reports on the late leader Kim Jong Il's travels across the country and negative tweets about South Korea.

North Korea appears to have added Facebook to other social networking sites it recently joined to ramp up its propaganda war against South Korea and the U.S.