Google official to visit N. Korea

Exec chairman reportedly to go with humanitarian mission

— Google’s executive chairman is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea.

Eric Schmidt will be traveling to North Korea on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The sources, two people familiar with the group’s plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public.

The trip would be the first by a top executive from U.S.-based Google, the world’s largest Internet search provider, to a country considered to have the most restrictive Internet policies on the planet.

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day “industrial revolution” in a New Year’s Day speech to the nation Monday. He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory.

However, giving citizens open access to the Internet has not been part of the regime’s strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic Intranet service, very few have clearance to freely surf the World Wide Web.

It was not clear who Schmidt and Richardson expect to meet in North Korea, a country that has no diplomatic relations with the United States. North Korea has almost no business with companies in the U.S., which has banned the import of North Korean-made goods.

Schmidt, however, has been a vocal advocate of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology.

As Google’s chief executive officer for a decade until 2011, Schmidt oversaw Google’s ascent from a California startup focused on helping computer users search the Internet to a global technology giant making inroads into mobile phone markets as well as mapping.

Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea’s neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for Internet censorship.

After being accused of complying with China’s strict Internet regulations, known as “the Great Firewall of China,” Google pulled its search business from the world’s largest Internet market in 2010 by redirecting traffic from mainland China to Hong Kong. The company maintains other businesses in China, but a recent transparency report shows Google’s services there sporadically are blocked.

Since stepping aside as CEO, Schmidt has served as Google’s executive chairman, largely responsible for the company’s external relationships with policymakers, business partners and governments around the world.

In recent months, Schmidt had been working with Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who heads Google’s New York-based think tank, on a book about the Internet’s role in shaping society. The New Digital Age is to be published in April.

Schmidt’s message: The Internet and mobile technology have the power to lift people out of poverty and political oppression.

“The spread of mobile phones and new forms of connectivity offer us the prospect of connecting everybody,” he said in commencement speech at Boston University in May. “When that happens, connectivity can revolutionize every aspect of society: politically, socially, economically.”

Before late leader Kim Jong Il’s death a year ago, North Korea indicated interest in repairing relations with Washington.

Last year, a group of North Koreans visited Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Information for this article was contributed by Youkyung Lee of The Associated Press.

Business, Pages 22 on 01/03/2013

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