Google executive chairman to visit North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Google's executive chairman is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea.

Mr Eric Schmidt will be travelling to North Korea on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico Governor 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 United States-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 on Monday. He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitised machinery in every factory.