[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMmeQjMP_es]One of the DPRK’s official websites seems to have signed up for a YouTube account. The channel “urminzokkiri” appeared on 14 July with video tributes to Kim Jong Il, denials of sinking the Cheonan, and videos denouncing the Lee Administration. Above is one of the channel’s videos, from Han Sang Ryol’s extended summer stay in the country.
Yonhap reports:
At least 10 clips were found Tuesday under the name of uriminzokkiri, which represents the North’s Web site. The name in Korean means “on our own as a nation” and was registered July 14.
The uploaded footage contain regurgitations of official cant that honor the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, and the usual South Korea bashing. The Aug. 2 upload contained an elaborately produced three-minute clip lashing out at South Korea’s foreign minister.
Another clip, uploaded the same day and also produced in Korean, ridicules Seoul for its failure to stop the U.N. Security Council from placing Pyongyang’s denial in its statement deploring the deadly March sinking of the Cheonan warship.
Forty-six South Korean sailors died in the sinking that a multinational investigation found the North responsible for in May. Military tensions have since soared between the two countries, which remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
North Korea has been expanding the use of the Internet in its propaganda offensive, observers say. In June, a North Korean woman believed to be an agent uploaded a clip praising her communist country on YouTube, drawing media attention here and abroad.