Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is in North Korea with Google‘s chairman, said his delegation is pressing the communist country to stop missile launches and nuclear tests, an international media outlet said Wednesday.

Richardson is also calling on Pyongyang to allow more cell phones and unrestricted Internet access for North Koreans as well as humane treatment for an American detained in the country, the Associated Press reported in an interview story dispatched from Pyongyang.

“The citizens of the DPRK will be better off with more cell phones and an active Internet,” Richardson said. His delegation has delivered such views to many North Korean officials, he said.

The delegation, which arrived in the North late Monday via Beijing on what Richardson called “a private humanitarian mission,”also includes Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, the world’s biggest Internet company, as well as several staff members.

The four-day trip reportedly aims to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour agent being detained for nearly two months, and assess the country‘s Internet environment and determine if improvements can be made.

The U.S. government expressed its reservations over the trip as it comes less than a month after the communist country launched a long-range rocket. Pyongyang said the rocket carried a satellite into orbit, but the United States and many other country’s condemned it as an experiment to test the country‘s ballistic missile technology. Washington is in the process of reviewing what penalties it can slap on the country for ignoring warnings by the international community.

The country successfully launched the rocket on Dec. 12 and the outside world is closely watching whether the launch will be followed by nuclear weapons tests as were the country’s two previous rocket launches in 2006 and 2009.

Photo images from Pyongyang showed Schmidt browsing a computer lab at the North‘s top-ranked Kim Il-sung University and watching a North Korean student conduct an Internet search.

North Korean leader Kim Jon-un highlighted its ambitions in the science and technology sectors in his televised New Year’s speech, which is deemed to be outlining the country‘s policy plan for 2013.

“We should wage a dynamic campaign to push back the frontiers of science and technology so as to develop the country’s overall science and technology to the world standards as soon as possible,”Kim said. (Yonhap)



<관련 한글 기사>

방북단 미사일 발사와 핵실험 중단 촉구해



지난 7일 베이징을 거쳐 북한으로 들어간 에릭 슈미트 구글 회장과 빌 리처드슨 전 뉴멕시코 주지사는 미사일 발사와 핵실험을 더 이상 하지 말라는 메시지를 전달했다고 수요일 한 매체가 밝혔다.

리처드슨은 북한 주민들을 위해 평양 내의 핸드폰 사용과 인터넷 사용을 확산시켜야 해야 한다고 촉구했다. 또한, 북한이 억류한 미국인을 정당하고 인도적으로 대우하라고 전달했다고 했다.

“북한 국민이 더 많은 휴대폰과 인터넷을 사용하면 더 잘 살게 될 것이다,”고 리처드슨은 말했다.

3박 4일간의 방북 일정 동안 방북단의 목표는 북한에 약 2달간 억류중인 케네스 배씨를 데려가는 것이다.

수주 전 북한이 장거리 미사일을 발사해 국제사회의 우려와 비판이 가시지 않은 상황에서 이들의 북한 방문은 큰 이슈가 됐다. (코리아헤럴드)