More Clamping Down

The DPRK continues its crackdown on foreign influences, arresting several North Korean citizens and one foreign national on charges of spying. Part of their crime was that they were apparently bringing in information about the outside world, or as the regime charmingly puts it, spreading "illusion about the free world."

The alleged spies were assigned to obtain the coordinates of a military installation using a global positioning device and to pass along state and military secrets, the ministry said, according to KCNA. They also tried to lure senior officials to leave their homeland by fomenting ``illusion about the free world,'' it said.

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North Korea's rare announcement ``demonstrated its will to control its people and safeguard its system,'' said Koh Yu-hwan, an expert on the country at South Korea's Dongguk University.

North Korea has struggled to keep outside information from seeping into the country out of concern that it could lead to the overthrow of its reclusive communist regime.

Despite an official ban, some North Koreans are communicating with the outside world, mostly by using cell phones on Chinese communication networks, according to North Korean defectors in South Korea.