Students at North Korea’s elite Kim Il-sung University will now have at their fingertips millions of electronic records extolling the accomplishments of the late Great Leader, as well as the current Dear Leader, thanks to the generosity of… South Korea. In what was no doubt a bureaucratic boondoggle:

A group of 143 South Koreans made a four-day visit to North Korea starting from March 22 to celebrate the opening of a North Korean digital library built with South Korean technology, a local foundation that has a leading role in the project said.

During their stay in Pyongyang, Rep. Im Jong-seok of the ruling Uri Party and other delegates attended the opening ceremony of the digital library at the North’s top school, Kimilsung University, on March 23 and toured the city’s landmarks.

The library’s computer network was built with aid from South Korea’s Hanyang University, the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and the Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation, a private foundation for the promotion of such inter-Korean cooperation.

Kimilsung University is the first North Korean school to introduce the South’s advanced digital library system.

If the south is actually providing genuine study materials and information, this may be justified, but if they are merely providing a tool for KISU to enhance the indoctrination that does occur there, it’s sort of a waste. I also would not be surprised to see the system either replaced with something lesser or entirely removed for use by North Korea intelligence services, or perhaps to catalogue Kim Jong-il’s private media collection(s).