Tweets allow peek at life in NKorea in real time

Wednesday February 27, 2013 2:00 PM

By JEAN H. Lee

The Associated Press

"Hello world from comms center in (hash)Pyongyang."

That Twitter missive, sent Monday from Koryolink's main service center using my iPhone, marked a milestone for North Korea: It was believed to be the first tweet sent from a cellphone using the country's new 3G mobile data service.

Later, as we drove through Pyongyang, AP's Chief Asia photographer David Guttenfelder shot an image of a commuter walking beneath a bridge at dusk. We uploaded these images to Instagram geotagged "Pyongyang."

Pretty ordinary stuff in the world of social media, but revolutionary for North Korea, a country with an intricate set of rules designed to stage manage the flow of images and information both inside and beyond its borders.

©2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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