SEOUL, Jan. 8 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's Twitter account was apparently hacked with a string of tweets derogatory of leader Kim Jong-il and his heir Kim Jong-un on Saturday, the birthday of the hereditary successor.
The four most recent feeds posted in the morning accused the Kims of exploiting their people to enjoy sumptuous lives, and develop nuclear arms and missiles. One tweet called for an uprising to slay the Kims "with a sword."
"Let's create a new world by rooting out our people's sworn enemy Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un!" one tweet read. Another sought to convince readers that the removal of the dynasty would lead North Koreans to live "as happily as South Koreans."
North Korea opened the Korean-language Twitter account @uriminzok in August and has since tweeted about 1,300 messages idolizing its leader and denouncing South Korea and the United States.
The apparent hacking on Saturday came after North Korea's official Web site, uriminzokkiri -- which is believed to operate the Twitter account -- was reportedly duped last month into carrying for a day a message that called the Kims harsh names.
North Korea runs a massive cult of personality around its 68-year-old leader and his family, and any defamation of the leadership is a sin punishable by death. Albeit often unsuccessfully, the North retains harsh controls on its impoverished 23-million people to keep them isolated from outside information.
In moves that befuddled and surprised observers, North Korea last year opened accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, expanding its propaganda front amid mounting international pressure on Pyongyang after it was blamed for a series of armed provocations.
The latest breach on Twitter for North Korea came on the birthday of Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il's youngest son, who was unveiled to the world in September as a full general.
Little is known about the way the 28- or 29-year-old thinks of his country and its relationship with the outside world. North Korean officials have touted him as the most capable of inheriting the songun, or military-first, policy his father had chartered.
Kim Jong-il himself took over the regime after his own father and North Korean founder Kim Il-sung died in 1994. Kim Jong-un is believed to have been groomed as successor since Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008.
South Korean officials said earlier this week the North appeared to be preparing a low-key celebration of Kim Jong-un's birthday like last year. A South Korean activist group on Friday quoted an unidentified source as saying that his birthday had yet to be marked as a public holiday, claiming the presence of lingering doubts among people about him as their next leader. The birthdays of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung are huge national holidays in North Korea.
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N. Korea's Twitter account on Saturday shows messages derogatory of leadership, an indication it has been hacked. The image is a capture from a mobile phone. (Yonhap) |
samkim@yna.co.kr
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