On Monday, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt arrived in North Korea with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson on a humanitarian mission. Today the duo visited a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang where--get this--students were online surfing an intranet service. (You say computer lab in Pyongyang, we say soundstage in Hollywood.)
According to an AP report, students were searching Google and Wikipeida (e.g., the New York City page) in a country that has the strictest internet policy on the planet. Very few people can use the web there. Those who do have access can only view pages deemed acceptable by the government, like creepy and skewed state-run news sites. (Do they even know about Caturday in North Korea?!) According to the Guardian, one student even had access to a prestigious ivy league school, noting, "One student showed Schmidt how he accesses reading materials from Cornell University online on a computer with a red tag denoting it as a gift from Kim Jong-il."
In addition to checking out students using the web, Schmidt and Richardson are reportedly in the Communist country to help a US citizen accused of committing "hostile" acts against the state, which could result in a 10-year prison sentence or longer.
Video report below:
Previously: Google's Eric Schmidt In North Korea On 'Humanitarian Mission'