North Korea Looking For Friends On Facebook 183
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."
Re:Rather stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
illegal information... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rather stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their citizens can get on the Internets?
Re:no points (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd befriend them (Score:4, Insightful)
But then they'd get access of all my friends and activities.
With all the kidnapping they've done in Japan, Korea and elsewhere, who knows what is the real purpose of that page.
I'd say collecting information on potential targets is high on the list.
/ puts on the multi-ply tinfoil hat.
I wonder what happens if you poke them? (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rather stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like they're uploading critical information (i.e. classified materials) to facebook. The worst the US could do is to deface the page. Of course if they were going to do that then they could have already set up a fake north Korean page and filled it with lies. Of course, there's no point in doing either of these things because there's nothing to be gained. It's not like the US needs to change the public view of North Korea.
Re:illegal information... (Score:5, Insightful)
like holocaust denial in Germany?
Re:Zynga (Score:4, Insightful)
Kim Jong-Il heard about Farmville and thought that sounded fun
Mr Kim, or as he prefers to be called "the dear leader", doesn't need Facebook to play games with farming or people's lives. He has control over millions of real people, all of whom can be forced to participate in whatever macabre social experiment he chooses to conduct, except that here in the real world there are no saves, no continues and you get only 1 life. The continued existence of the North Korean Worker's Party and the monstrous state that it has produced is one of the greatest ongoing travesties of social justice in our time. It is hard to imagine any other place on earth where the ordinary citizen is worse off than in North Korea. At least in Somalia and Sudan the people have some inkling of what the outside world is like and whether or not they are being lied to. The people of North Korea, on the other hand, have been so thoroughly brainwashed and controlled that the outside world essentially does not exist for them or at least not in any way that is meaningful. Even Cuba is practically a paradise by way of comparison to North Korea. Mr Kim and his father are disgraces to the entire human race, in the same league as Hitler and Stalin before them, and history will forever damn their names, just as surely as Hitler and Stalin are damned, when Korea is eventually re-united under a freely elected and democratic government of by and for the people of Korea. In the meantime the rest of the free world should do whatever it can to hasten that day.
Re:illegal information... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:illegal information... (Score:2, Insightful)
...is a ridiculous concept
Wikileaks... USA...
Re:no points (Score:2, Insightful)
This is where slashdot moderation fails. What we need is a -1 ill-informed. The only thing you got right is that the North Korean leaders aren't crazy.
Re:illegal information... (Score:3, Insightful)
And before people start yelling about "exceptions to freedom of speech", consider this. It is in fact legal to say "Barack Obama is a pedophile" in public, even though it's defamatory - I just did and there's nothing wrong with it. What's illegal is presenting it as fact. Same with "give me 2000 dollars or I'll shoot you". You can even say "fire" in a crowded theater, you just can't shout it at the top of your lungs. It's all about context and intent. Laws that make certain patterns of information illegal no matter what, however, most definitely are ridiculous and abhorrent.
Re:Zynga (Score:4, Insightful)
Reunification will cause an immediate economic collapse like the world has seldom seen, followed by at least one generation of chaos as the brainwashed masses slowly die off from old age.
Of course, it needs to be done - but it is going to *suck*.
One thing you need to consider though (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that South Korea is not the US, and doesn't have the same free speech laws. Not everyone subscribes to the same idea of freedom as the US. Some places have freedoms the US doesn't, some lack freedoms the US has.
Free countries don't mean unlimited freedom, and not all free countries are of the same mind on what freedoms people should have.
Re:Zynga (Score:4, Insightful)
[North Korean] people will never, ever be able to live productive lives in a free society - they simply don't know how.
Most East Germans managed to adapt pretty well after the reunification, although North Korea is probably a bit worse than the GDR was. I don't think that Koreans are THAT much different from Germans. But yeah, it isn't going to be easy.
Re:North Korea... (Score:3, Insightful)
At first, I thought the Best Korea joke was hilarious. But now, I think its really a tragedy.