Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

North Korea gets on social media with hilarious results

Well, if you have a particular sense of humor anyway. Never known as the most web savvy of nations, North Korea has posted a series of web videos…

Well, if you have a particular sense of humor anyway. Never known as the most web savvy of nations, North Korea has posted a series of web videos on YouTube that make fun of Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates, and a variety of South Korean leaders. At the same time, the government appears to have a Twitter feed under the name “uriminzok” (“our nation”) and it has about 6000 followers, after the New York Times wrote about it:

Another clip claimed that North Korea would prevail in a war with the “American imperialists” because it was armed with nuclear-fusion technology; because of its juche, or ideology of “self-reliance”; and because of a philosophical treatise written by Kim Il-sung, the North’s founding president and the father of Kim Jong-il, who died in 1994.
“I don’t think this propaganda from the North will have any significant impact among South Koreans,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, an expert on North Korea at Korea University here. “People watch this for fun, not to be influenced.”