Twitter Fight! S. Korea Blocks North's Tweets

Don't they have this backward? After North Korea took a shine to Twitter, South Korea is censoring its tweets. The North began tweeting a week ago—propaganda, along the lines of 'we didn't sink that boat'—and the South has just blocked its residents from accessing the feed, the Guardian reports. The tweets are deemed "illegal information," as in "contents that praises, promotes and glorifies" North Korea.

"We decided to act immediately, after having considered the unique nature of social networking services like Twitter, where specific information can be dispersed to thousands in a short period of time," said a government official. One expert on the peninsula tells the Christian Science Monitor that the South's move is "ridiculous" and "seems to be a holdover from the authoritarian governments of the past. The best they could do would be to lift all restrictions.” (More North Korea Twitter stories.)