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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has told schools to teach
information technology from an early age so his impoverished country
can keep up with the age of the computer, official media said
Tuesday.
Kim also called for further development of
software technology, the Korean Central News Agency said.
"It is of weighty importance to develop
programming technology as required by the age of science and
technology and the age of the computer," he was quoted as
saying during a recent visit to a computer programming exhibition.
Kim also set "highly important"
guidelines for further developing the country's programming
technology, it said without giving a date for the visit.
The hardline communist state in recent years has
stressed science and technology as a way of reviving its crumbling
economy.
A new year editorial setting out policy goals
called for a focus on technology, along with efforts to shore up
basic industries such as coal mining, power generation and iron and
steel.
"The role of science and technology should
be decisively raised in building an economic power," it said.
Kim, 65, has boasted in the past of being an
Internet expert even though his regime tightly restricts access to
the web.
According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency,
he told delegates to last October's inter-Korean summit that his
expertise made him reluctant to expand access to the web.
"I am an Internet expert. Many problems
would arise if the Internet is connected to other parts of the
North," Yonhap quoted Kim as saying.
Last month a website www.dprk-economy.com
opened to attract foreign investment to the country, one of the
world's most closed societies.
The North operates its own version of the
Internet, a highly censored Intranet that has its own messaging
function, according to Seoul officials.
It is policed by the Korea Computer Center,
North Korea's window on the worldwide web and its leading
high-technology research and development hub.
The centre, set up in 1990, acts as the regime's
gatekeeper, selecting only approved information and downloading it
onto the Intranet.
Content is mostly limited to science and
technology and available only to selected research institutes,
universities, factories and a few individuals.
-- AFP
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