(Photo: Flickr)

One day after hacktivist collective Anonymous claimed to have stolen 15,000 membership records from the "semi-official" North Korea government outlet uriminzokkiri.com, the country's official Flickr and Twitter accounts have also been hacked. So far, the @uriminzokkiri account has tweeted five times to signal that several North Korean websites, including ryomyong.com and uriminzokkiri.com" had been hacked.

The country's Flickr page was also hacked and defaced, loaded with images of Guy Fawkes masks and Kim Jong Un photoshopped into a pig with the word "WANTED" above him.

#OpNorthKorea seeks to help usher the North Korean people on a "journey to freedom, democracy and peace" by hacking into and defacing its government's online properties. A second press release published to Pastebin claims that Anonymous has sources inside the North Korean intranet:

We have a few guys on the ground who managed to bring th real internet into the country using a chain of long distance WiFi repeaters with proprietary frequencies, so they're not jammed (yet). We also have access to some N.K. phone landlines which are connected to Kwangmyong through dial-ups. Last missing peace of puzzle was to interconnect the two networks, which those guys finally managed to do.

Of course, because this is Anonymous, the group plans to inject pictures of cats and porn into North Korea's network to prove their access, because "North Korean citizens wanna see lulzy kittehs and hawt pr0n too."

Expect 'em everywhere, even behind you in the line for Starbucks.

Is there any situation into which Anons will not insert themselves? The Next Web reports that, as North Korea rattles its saber louder and louder, hackers flying the flag of Anonymous have basically declared war on the country's authoritarian government. In a note published on Pastebin, they addressed Kim Jong-Un: "So you feel the need to create large nukes and threaten half the world with them?
So you're into demonstrations of power?, here is ours."

We're sure Mr. Kim is quaking in his boots.

In the wake of DDoS attacks this weekend, the hackers claim they've infiltrated the country's local intranets, mailservers and webservers. As a demonstration, the Pastebin note brags they've gotten 15,000 "membership records" of the site uriminzokkiri.com (a kind of "semi-official" government outlet) and promises, "First we gonna wipe your data, then we gonna wipe your badass dictatorship 'government'."

That first part sounds maybe doable; the second sounds... ambitious.

If the North Korean government wants to stave off this threat of digital havoc, Anonymous suggests they submit to the following demands: No more making nukes and no more nuclear threats; Kim Jong-un's resignation (?!); a "free direct democracy" for North Korea, and "uncensored internet access for all the citizens!" Might want to add a couple of provisos about food and prison camps, guys.

It's not clear who's behind the note, but it ends with an address to the people of North Korea: "Don't fear us, we are not terrorist, we are the good guys from the internet. AnonKorea and all the other Anons are here to set you free." Meanwhile, clearinghouse @YourAnonNews has been tweeting the news, with the hashtag #OpNorthKorea.

Essay prompt: Would our world look so much like Neuromancer if William Gibson had never written it? Discuss.

Get this guy a Magic Mouse, stat! (Photo: NKNews.org)

Greetings from a greying 2008 MacBook, which has more crumbs stuck inside the keyboard than your scarf after eating a muffin and is so painfully slow that just opening up a new Chrome tab can take a full minute.

Know who doesn't have this problem? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As you read this on the ancient PC your employer so kindly provided for you, Mr. Kim is clickin' around on his shiny new iMac like a boss dictator, probably using all that sweet bandwidth he hoards for himself.

Totally a serious diplomat. (Photo: dennisrodman.com)

Dennis Rodman might want to be a bit more discriminating in his choice of friends. The former NBA star has only just returned from his visit to North Korea, where he forged a bond with tinpot dictator Kim Jong-Un that's already gotten him kicked out of a fancy hotel bar for refusing to shut the hell up about the Supreme Leader's awesomeness.

Now, in advance of a U.N. vote over whether to impose sanctions on the country for its recent nuclear test, North Korea is threatening to unleash a nuclear attack on the United States if the U.N. dares to impose new sanctions on the country.

The AP reports:

An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.

Man, we're all going to be really embarrassed if that brain-dead Red Dawn remake turns out to be prescient.

But before anyone dives under his desk and kisses his ass goodbye, it's worth noting that this belligerent Stalinist dictatorship almost certainly doesn't have the technology to put a sufficiently small warhead on a missile that can hit the U.S. Angry rhetoric is pretty much North Korea's number-one (and possibly only) export. We can't imagine the saber-rattling makes anyone on the West Coast feel too cozy, though.

Has Eric Schmidt ever been this thoroughly upstaged?

The good old days. (Photo: TopTenz.net)

One unexpected result of Eric Schmidt's bizarre mission to North Korea? The Google chairman has apparently paved the way for "basketball diplomacy" between our two nations. The AP reports that former Chicago Bulls player and Carmen Electra ex Dennis Rodman is visiting Pyongyang with a Vice documentary crew. Let's hope Vice remembers to scrub the metadata from any sensitive photos this time.

Mr. Schmidt, laying some knowledge on us. (Screencap)

Hard on the heels of Google chairman Eric Schmidt's jaunt to North Korea, the World's Most Isolated Country™ is letting a bit of Internet breeze in. The AP reports that foreigners in the country will soon have access to 3G connections, meaning they'll now be able to fact-check anything their government-assigned tour guides tell them. Be warned, however, that your surroundings are probably bugged six ways to Sunday. 

It was only very recently that North Korea started letting outsiders hang onto their cell phones upon crossing the border. After his visit, Mr. Schmidt called on the country to loosen up a little: "the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth," he wrote.

Not that the ruling family goes without. As the AP points out:

Late leader Kim Jong Il was revealed to have been a Mac user. His Macbook Pro, or a replica, is enshrined at the Kumsusan mausoleum where his body lies in state.

Current leader Kim Jong Un, meanwhile, was shown in a recent photo with a more mobile computing accessory: a smartphone.

However, the average North Korean has no such luck. Though there are something like a million cell phones in the country and citizens have access to basic services like SMS, the AP says the mobile Internet will not be open to the locals. No big surprise there, given that access to the country's broadband connections are pretty stringently doled out.

But hey, now someone might get some real use out of these detailed new Google Maps, other than CIA agents trying to find nuclear testing sites.

The gloriously candid Mr. Schmidt has taken on more of a policy role since stepping down as CEO in 2011, focusing on the company's external relationships with business partners and governments. He's working on a book called The New Digital Age with Jared Cohen, the fratty-looking former State Department policy and planning adviser, who now heads Google Ideas, a New York-based think tank that "convenes unorthodox stakeholders."

It's unclear how the message of Mr. Schmidt's book--that the Internet and mobile tech can free people from poverty and political oppression--will go over in Pyongyang, or even who they'll visit, considering that North Korea has no diplomatic relations with the U.S. and hosts "almost no business with companies in the U.S."

But if the GOOG is searching for unorthodox stakeholders, they may want to look at the newest iteration of its supreme leader:

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day “industrial revolution” in a New Year’s Day speech to the nation Monday. He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory.

Milder rhetoric aside, the visit to North Korea follows the recent jailing of an American citizen of Korean descent on suspicion of committing “hostile” acts against the state. And Mr. Richardson has previously been on trips to North Korea to negotiate the release of American detainees. But it's worth noting that Google has also been willing to play ball with restrictive governments before, to a point:

After being accused of complying with China’s strict Internet regulations, known as “the Great Firewall of China,” Google pulled its search business from the world’s largest Internet market in 2010 by redirecting traffic from mainland China to Hong Kong. The company maintains other businesses in China, but a recent transparency report shows Google’s services there sporadically are blocked.

Mr. Schmidt was talking about implanting chips in your brain when he said, "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," but it seems to work for policy as well.

One of the Internet's most prolific Kim Jong-un memes. (Photo: 1mut)

A few weeks ago we reported that 4chan, the Internet's favorite underbelly, was galvanizing to vote North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the top of Time’s person of the year reader poll. It seems it has been successful in its pursuit, as Time just announced that Kim Jong-un won the spot. This, of course, doesn't mean that he will certainly be the Time editors' person of the year pick, but it demonstrates the immense online voting power of 4chan.

Kim Jong-un garned 5.6 million votes, putting him just ahead of Jon Stewart. Time was gracious enough to acknowledge 4chan's influence:

However, some of the highest vote tallies got a boost from members of Internet forums like 4Chan who launched a campaign to manipulate the results pushing North Korea’s supreme leader to the top of the list.

A few days ago, 4chan also spelled out "KJU Gas Chambers" with the first letters of each nominee's name, because it's 4chan, guys.

A 4chan member posted a script for automated voting.

That didn't take long: A week after Time opened an annual online poll allowing readers to vote their choice for the magazine's Person of the Year, 4chan has succeeded in pushing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the top of the list. By a long shot.

After a 4chan user posted a script to automate the voting process, according to the Daily Dot, Mr. Kim surged to 2.99 million votes, far outpacing Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, who's in second place with more than 389,000 votes.

While the magazine's editors reserve the right to name the magazine's Person of the Year themselves, virtually guaranteeing that the North Korean dictator won't grace the newsweekly's POY cover, Time lets internet voters anoint the year's "Most Influential Person"—an honor that 4chan voters brought home for co-founder Chris Poole in 2009.

Given the current standings, Mr. Kim looks like a lock to follow in Mr. Poole's footsteps when polling closes on December 12.

(Photo: Imgur)

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is having the best week ever. After being nominated by The Onion as 2012's sexiest man alive--and having the announcement subsequently spread across papers in China as if The Onion is a legitimate news source--the meme-friendly leader now has 4chan gunning for him. Like it did for the site's founder Moot back in 2009, The Daily Dot reports that 4chan's /b/ board is assembling to affect the outcome of Time's Person of the Year award.

Though Time editors technically choose the winner, the magazine also runs a poll on its website for the Internet to decide who is the world's "Most Influential Person." Dubbed "Operation: Kim Jung Un for Time's Person of the Year," 4chan is already off to a good start: Kim Jong Un is currently ranked number two in the poll, trailing Egyptian president Mohamed Morsy.

Back in 2009, 4chan galvanized to successfully vote its cofounder, the litigious Chris Poole, as the World's Most Influential Person, beating Bernie Madoff, Oprah Winfrey and our very own POTUS. Back then, Time said its technical team detected several efforts to "hack the vote," so we suspect the devs at Time to be on high alert until voting closes December 12th.