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North Korea Looking For Friends On Facebook

Posted by samzenpus on from the mandatory-friend-list dept.

crimeandpunishment writes "North Korea has apparently decided this social networking thing is worth doing. Just days after launching Twitter and YouTube accounts, it appears to have added Facebook to the list. It probably won't get too many friends in South Korea, which has already blocked access to the North Korean Twitter account for containing 'illegal information' under its security laws...and says the Facebook page could suffer the same fate."

17 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Zynga by Arancaytar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Kim Jong-Il heard about Farmville and thought that sounded fun-.

    1. Re:Zynga by mobby_6kl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As another poster pointed out, "a bit worse" is an understatement. East Germany was much better off relative to West than North Korea is to South. Here's a post I made about this on another forum:

      In the long run, sure. But even if DPRK were to collapse tomorrow, it's just not feasible for the two countries to fully reunite within several decades, at least. The comparison to West/East germany was already made, but maybe some numbers will make the scale of the problem sink in better. Raising the taxes in the south by a few percent isn't going to do it.

      Population
      East Germany: 16m
      West Germany: 63m
      3.9x higher population
      GDP per capita (couldn't find the raw numbers)
      West Germany has ~2.5x GDP

      Population
      North 24m
      South 48m
      2x higher population
      GDP per capita
      North 555
      South 19,300
      South is 35x higher. Thirty five times!

      From a pure humanistic point of view it would probably be better if the united Koreas were together but half as rich as the South used to be than for both to continue as-is, but I don't see that happening. There were twice as many West Germans for every East German as there are South Koreans to North Koreans, and the productivity and education was also much closer. The huge disparity in Koreas means that southerners could just adopt a northerner with their disposable income, but actually bringing them up to a comparable level would be a mind-boggling task.

      To be honest, I don't know what could be the other option. If it collapsed on its own without our involvement, the best bet would probably to leave them be and hope somebody more moderate gets into power and then slowly open up the trade and travel until the country reaches parity. If, on the other hand, there was an armed conflict and we (as in, everybody who isn't DPRK) rolled in to Pyongyang, my guess would be to install a puppet government and have them implement reforms while we pump in aid (insert your favorite development path), again, until there isn't such a huge difference. The population question would probably be the most difficult -- do we restrict travel, only let people into the north, allow working or student visas?

  2. Obligatory by linumax · · Score: 4, Funny

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh_9QhRzJEs

  3. no points by theheadlessrabbit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As much as I disagree with just about everything NK stands for, South Korea isn't winning an points in my book by blocking access.

    note: before any westerners point out that blocking access will only spike curiosity and make those in SK more interested it the account, I would like to point out that Korean culture values authority far more than ours, and from my own experience living there, the children in south Korea had little to no interest in the North.

    --
    -I only code in BASIC.-
    1. Re:no points by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Points taken, but the two Koreans are also much more alike than the Germans or Iraqis in other regards. Ever since the Silla dynasty unified Korea in 676, the Korean peninsula (or at least a big portion of it) was under a common ruler until 1945. There are no isolated minority culture, no minority languages, no nothing. It's just a big swath of Koreans from the Yalu River to the island of Jeju.

      Contrast that with the Germans, who managed to found a unified nation only in the 19th century.

      50 years of brutal oppression cannot take everything away. We still speak the same language, eat the same food, and observe the same holidays (at least some of them). The notion of shared cultural heritage runs strong in Korea, along with the feeling that it's our "destiny" to be unified again. You may say it's not sensible (there are certainly many people who feel that way), but you cannot deny that the feeling is there.

  4. north korea is best korea! by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Funny

    has most facebook friends! has most tweets!

    south korea only has glum relatives and miserly business contacts. north korea has loving adoration and sworn allegiance bonded in blood and exaltation for the perpetual people's struggle and revolutionary apparatus! like it! like it! like it!

    our great shining leader tweets 5,000 times a day with 3 million followers 24 hours a day no time for sleep! the people's struggle provides as sleep! each tweet a pearl of wisdom his grateful followers pore over for eternal wisdom in philosophy, economics, military strategy, acupuncture, home economics, and closet organization! retweet! retweet! retweet!

    the imperial aggressor america and her boot linking sycophant japan will suffer under the boot of the full force of the people's glorious tweeting and facebook friending struggle!

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  5. Re:Rather stupid... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Funny

    no different than most other face book users ..

    It has a completely meaning when North Korea 'cancels' the account of one of its citizen.

  6. I can't wait until the first photo tagging by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Funny

    of North Korea drinking it up with China and Cuba on a Friday night. Or better yet, people will start tagging goatse as NK.

  7. illegal information... by igotmybfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is a ridiculous concept

    1. Re:illegal information... by nanoakron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      like holocaust denial in Germany?

  8. Hmm... by trytoguess · · Score: 4, Funny

    Facebook is telling me NK's page no longer exists... thought it's twitter and youtube is still around. Also, what do people make of NK identifying itself as male, and being interested in men?

  9. Re:Rather stupid... by DarkKnightRadick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their citizens can get on the Internets?

    --
    "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
  10. What happens... by ghettoboy22 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When you un-friend Kim Jong-Il?

  11. The Accounts In Question by pgn674 · · Score: 4, Informative

    uriminzokkiri (uriminzok) on Twitter

    YouTube - uriminzokkiri's Channel

    Facebook | Uriminzokkiri

    Looks like the original Facebook "people" account they made was removed (probably by North Korea when they realized it didn't make sense to have a "people" account), and replaced with a "page" thing. I noticed the original account's username was uriminzokkiri, and the new one is uriminzokkiriLike, so maybe North Korea changed accounts primarily because they want the Like button? Lots of guessing here.

  12. Re:Hi! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Parent Anonymous Coward was making a reference to a popular meme which revolved around the 2chan and 4chan communities where angry [South] Koreans were waging electronic warfare (e.g. DDOS attacks, spamming, etc.) because of anti-korean jokes that were popular at the time.

    Unfortunately, this had the opposite of the intended effect and caused a more explosive anti-korean reaction - including the use of hundreds of different custom created images where everyone wanted it to be known that "North Korea is Best Korea". It reached its peak during the anti Bieber explosion of 4chan antics where the board members successfully destroyed the Bieber world-tour campaign's Internet contest to see where he would [definitely] go on his world tour (as well as many other humiliatingly hilarious things also).

    So your horrible attempt at humor was in actuality, massive fail. Plus that originally became popular from Full Metal Jacket.. a movie that took place in Vietnam.. not Korea.

  13. Re:Rather stupid... by jonfr · · Score: 4, Informative

    No. Only the military can get to the internet, and people connected to the leader of North-Korea. Everyone else can use the North-Korea intranet that they have if that person is lucky.

    The rest has nothing but media owned by the government, that is spewing out propaganda about South-Korea, U.S and others.

    North-Korea does not have official connection with the internet.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea

  14. "Trading" With North Korea - Against US Law? by GumphMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is trading with the DPRK legal in the United States? If Facebook/Twitter/etc. knowingly continued to provide a service the DPRK regime would they be in violation of US law?

    --
    Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button