South Korean Hackers Hit North Korea’s Twitter, YouTube Accounts
Someone is sending birthday greetings to Kim Jong Eun, the guy who may or may not be North Korea’s next figurehead, but who certainly has tremendous potential as an anti-regime propaganda foil.
Most YouTube viewers won’t notice a key detail about this crude (and rather clever) animation — it’s hosted on the pro-North Korean “uriminjokkiri” channel. Mr. Kim, you’ve been hacked:
The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan reports that they’ve also hit North Korea’s Twitter account (the real one, not the fake one):
Apparently breached by hackers, North Korea’s official Twitter account on Saturday described leader Kim Jong Il and heir apparent Kim Jong Eun as sworn enemies and called for an uprising to remove them from power.
By the time the micro-blogging mischief was over, the North Korean tweets had ranted to its 10,000-plus Twitter followers about profligate nuclear weapons spending and lavish Kim Jong Il drinking parties – hosted “while 3 million people are starving and freezing to death.”
Lunch, on me, to the first person who provides me a copy of the hacked tweets.
You have to wonder if the South Korean government is behind this, or whether this is the work of clever independent hacktivists, as the Post suggests. I can’t imagine this happening five or six years ago. Times certainly have changed.
The perception that Kim Jong Eun is being set up for a position of actual power has already made him the most hated man in North Korea. The perception is almost certainly false, but it isn’t groundless, either. Hello!
In North Korea, you don’t get placed prominently in venues like the reviewing stand or the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly just for Take Your Kid to Work Day. Clearly, there was a domestic propaganda campaign about Jong-Eun, of indeterminate scale. Creating the perception of dynastic continuity seems to be the only plausible motivation for this campaign. Did foreign North Korea-watchers (and North Korean citizens) infer too much from this? To the extent they thought Kim Jong Il could ever really replace his father, yes. To the extent they saw him being elevated as a figurehead, no. But if the regime has said less about Kim Jong Eun recently, it’s probably a tacit recognition of the fact that the people loathe him so much that his elevation has become a threat to the regime’s stability.
Now over to you, Kushibo.