Information center on North to open

South Korea plans to launch an open source center on North Korea next month that will provide consolidated information on the isolated communist country, an official said yesterday.

The Open Source Center is designed to collect foreign information made public by media reports, press releases and announcements by international organizations, said the official at the Ministry of Unification.

The ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, has hired three experts in English, Chinese and Japanese and plans to recruit three more experts in English and Russian. The ministry plans to restrict the center to its employees for the time being before allowing access by ordinary citizens. The ministry has been working to build a database of the North’s geography and officials. Separately, the National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s top spy agency, currently provides basic information on North Korea on its Web site. Yonhap