SEOUL — The United States is working to break through an “information blockade” that helps North Korea cover up serious rights abuses and keep its people in the dark, a senior US official said Thursday.

Robert King, Washington’s special envoy for human rights in the North, said the communist regime maintained “probably the most extreme example of isolation” in the world.

It allows its people virtually no Internet access and restricts cellphone communications. TVs and radios are pre-tuned to state-run stations only, and people seeking access to foreign news sources face severe punishment.

King said the regime’s control over outside information means it faces less of an outcry over its rights record than the Soviet Union did in the 1960s-80s -- even though conditions in the North appear to be worse. But there are signs this control is loosening, King told a Seoul forum, noting that the North in April had made a rare public admission that its long-range rocket launch had failed.

He said the admission was made largely because the regime believed its people would in any case hear of the failure from other news sources. — AFP