North Korea's Bamboo Curtain Is Coming Down

Mun Seong-hwi, a North Korean defector, speaking to someone in North Korea to gather information at his office in Seoul. Jean Chung for The New York Times

North Koreans Use Cellphones To Bare Secrets -- New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea, one of the world’s most impenetrable nations, is facing a new threat: networks of its own citizens feeding information about life there to South Korea and its Western allies.

The networks are the creation of a handful of North Korean defectors and South Korean human rights activists using cellphones to pierce North Korea’s near-total news blackout. To build the networks, recruiters slip into China to woo the few North Koreans allowed to travel there, provide cellphones to smuggle across the border, then post informers’ phoned and texted reports on Web sites.

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My Comment: About 20 years ago I read a reporter's comments on a discussion that he participated in between then Soviet President Gorbachev and FOX/News Corp. Rupert Murdock. President Gorbachev was commenting that the days of Soviet control over the media and news information was coming to an end .... that the communications revolution was putting an end to news censorship and the ability of a government to control the message.

Wow .... upon reflection I must confess that Soviet President Gorbachev was on the money .... and that 20 years ago.

North Korea's days of controlling the message for its people are slowly (and finally) coming to an end. What will happen after that is anyone's guess.