North Korea tries its hardest and succeeds in keeping its people isolated and in the dark about the outside world, and is the most successful regime to do so amidst a lack of international pressure, has always struggled economically. As a result of that struggle, North Korea is incorporating some aspects of the information age to its regime, including a self-contained "internet" and its own tablet computers.

Government officials offered The Associated Press to take a look at its advances in information technology at the "e-library" in North Korea's Kim Il Sung University, where rows of uniformed students surf the self-contained, tightly controlled Intranet called Kwangmyong, or "Bright." The Bright intranet is for universities, government offices, libraries and state-run corporations, while most North Koreans have no access to the Internet at all.

Computers run the 3.0 version of the North Korean operating system "Red Star," which is like the Microsoft operating system but is used only in North Korea. Red Star has audio and video players and even a game (Korean chess). A Firefox-style search engine called "Our Country" navigates users around 1,000 to 5,500 websites. Emails must be reviewed and approved by one of the vice presidents of the university before they can be sent.

Will Scott, a computer sciences instructor at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology said: "I haven't had a time when I've been allowed to use the Intranet -- since the point is that it is not open to foreigners."

Graduate students and professors at the university are allowed to access the real internet from a special computer lab where everyone's access is monitored. Scott said the graduate students see the Internet as a tool best used in moderation, due to the high level of self-censorship built into the collective psyche in the country, where the government warns about the danger of dealing with the outside world.