SEOUL: Three YouTube channels seen as linked to North Korea’s state media have been taken down, a spokesperson for the US video hosting site said on Tuesday (Jun 27), after South Korean regulators blocked them at the request of the country’s spy agency.
The channels featured English-speaking young women, including a girl as young as 11, who claimed to offer an unfiltered look at everyday life in North Korea as informal video bloggers, or “vloggers”.
The girl, who called herself Song A, spoke of visiting water parks, going to school, and reading Harry Potter books.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she released a video, ostensibly shot while in lockdown at home, praising the North Korean government’s response and assuring viewers that “everything is under control as it used to be and everyone is just fine”.
The YouTube spokesperson said in a statement that the decision to remove the channels was taken to comply with “US sanctions and trade compliance laws, including those related to North Korea”.
“After review and consistent with our policies, we terminated the three channels shared with us,” the statement said, without elaborating on who brought the channels to YouTube’s attention.
Source: CNA
