South Korea blocks access to North Korea's Twitter account

South Korea has blocked North Korea's new Twitter account from being accessed in the South, saying the tweets contain "illegal information" under the country's security laws.

North Korea announced last week saying it has a Twitter account and a YouTube channel in an apparent effort to boost its propaganda war against South Korea and the United States. The Twitter account gained more than 8,500 followers in a week, though it has posted just 30 tweets linking to reports that praise North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and lambast South Korea and the U.S. over their ongoing joint military drills. North Korea, one of the world's most secretive countries, blocks Internet access for all but the elite among its 24 million citizens but is believed to have a keen interest in information technology. On August 19, South Korea's state-run Communications Standards Commission began blocking the site from Internet users in the South trying to view the account, commission officials said.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that South Korea is now blocking its own citizens' access to North Korea's Twitter account due to concerns that North Korean propagandists are using the social media website to subvert the South.