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SEOUL: Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has boasted of being an "Internet expert," reports said Saturday.
The communist state keeps itself closed to the outside world to prevent so-called spiritual pollution from subverting its hardline socialist system.
Kim told delegates at this week's historic inter-Korean summit his Internet expertise made him reluctant to allow further access to the Web in the communist state, the South's Yonhap news agency reported.
Kim's comment came as he turned down South Korea's proposal that a joint industrial park in the communist state be connected to the Internet.
"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.
On his way home to Seoul from the summit in Pyongyang, Roh said Kim seemed to be "very familiar with the technical aspects of the Internet."
The media is a propaganda tool in North Korea, where television sets and radios are tuned to official channels only, and the leadership is aware of the Internet's potential to stir up dissent.
It operates its own version of the Internet, a highly censored Intranet that is policed by the Korea Computer Center, North Korea's window on the worldwide web and its leading high-technology research and development hub.
In 2000, Kim took then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright by surprise by asking for her e-mail address, demonstrating his strong interest in science and technology.
- AFP/ir
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