Rise of the Online Autocrats

The tweets started arriving in August, and they did not mince words. One of the first accused the South Korean government of being “a prostitute of the United States.” The Twitter account, under the name “uriminzok,” or “our nation,” seemed to be part of a sprawling North Korean digital operation that included a Facebook account (registered as a man interested in “meeting other men,” but solely for “networking purposes”) and a series of YouTube videos meant to celebrate the might of the North Korean military.

A spokesman for the North Korean government quickly denied any involvement with the Facebook and Twitter accounts, but he acknowledged that they were the work of government supporters living in China and Japan. The owner of the Facebook page (which the Palo Alto, Calif., company eventually deleted, citing violation of its terms of service) told a South Korean news agency that it was run by a Pyongyang-based publishing outlet affiliated with the government.

Read the rest of this post on the original site