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

Eric Schmidt will travel to the country on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson as early as this month.

The trip would be the first by a top executive from US-based Google, the world's largest internet search provider, to a country considered to have the most restrictive internet policies in the world.

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.

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.

However, giving citizens open access to the internet has not been part of North Korea's strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic intranet service, very few have clearance to freely surf the web.

It remains highly unlikely Google will push to launch a business venture in the country, according to Victor Cha, a former senior Asia specialist in the Bush administration.

"Perhaps the most intriguing part of this trip is simply the idea of it," said Cha, an analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington. Kim Jong-un "clearly has a penchant for the modern accoutrements of life", he said.

"If Google is the first small step in piercing the information bubble in Pyongyang, it could be a very interesting development."

It was not immediately clear whom Schmidt and Richardson expect to meet in North Korea, a country that does not have diplomatic relations with the US.

North Korea has almost no business with companies in the US, 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.

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Kim's first New Year's speech, delivered on state TV, was peppered with rhetoric, with calls for boosting the military's capabilities and making the science and technology sector world class. But other passages in the speech were also an acknowledgement of the poor state of the country's economy that has long lagged behind the rest of the region.

North Korea has little arable land, is prone to natural disasters and struggles to grow enough food for its 24 million people.

The annual New Year's Day message lays out North Korea's policy goals for the year. But Kim gave no indication whether he plans to introduce economic reforms or allow free enterprise, except to say the economy should be underpinned by science and technology.

"The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant," he said.

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"We must extend the fight against the enemy's ideological and cultural infiltration," Kim said in an October speech at the headquarters of his immensely powerful internal security service. Kim, who became North Korea's supreme leader after the death of his father a year ago, called upon his vast security network to "ruthlessly crush those hostile elements."

Over the past year, Kim has intensified a border crackdown that has attempted to seal the once-porous 1,420-kilometer (880-mile) frontier with China, smugglers and analysts say, trying to hold back the onslaught.

The assault that he fears? It's being waged with cheap televisions rigged to receive foreign broadcasts, and with smuggled mobile phones that — if you can get a Chinese signal along the border — can call the outside world. Very often, it arrives in the form of wildly popular South Korean soap operas smuggled in on DVDs or computer thumb drives.

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The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tour operator of Korean descent.

An expert said he is likely to become a bargaining chip for the North, an attempt to draw the U.S. into talks. Five other Americans known to have been detained in North Korea since 2009 were all eventually released.

North Korean state media said Pae arrived in the far northeastern city of Rajin on Nov. 3 as part of a tour.

Rajin is part of a special economic zone not far from Yanji, China, that has sought to draw foreign investors and tourists over the past year. Yanji, home to many ethnic Korean Chinese, also serves as a base for Christian groups that shelter North Korean defectors.

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As newspapers, magazines, and websites rush to beat each other to the finish line on breaking news, thorough source-checking has been known to lose out. Perhaps that's why a number of these fake news stories were promoted a bit longer than they ought to have been.

However, these egregious mistakes — ranging from sexy North Korean leaders to all-inclusive "abortionplexes" — sure do make for great comedy. Here are some 2012 examples of fake news in the real world.

1. Kim Jong Un is the Sexiest Man in the World

Kim Jong Un, the current Dear Leader of North Korea and heir to Kim Jong Il, is something of a cipher at the moment, as he attempts to fill the large (and eccentric) shoes voided by his father and grandfather. One thing is for sure: The moon-faced 27-year-old is not often referred to as sexy in polite company.

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According to the US, the object that was sent into space by Pyongyang appears to be “tumbling out of control” as it orbits the earth, reported NBC News.

Yet South Korean officials told the Associated Press that the long-range rocket is orbiting normally, though it's unclear if it is functioning properly while in orbit.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told Fox News that the satellite is orbiting at a speed of 4.7 miles per second. He said it takes two weeks to determine whether a satellite is operating successfully.

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The U.S. condemned the "highly provocative act"; Japan called the launch "extremely regrettable"; South Korea said it was "a clear violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions ... and a threat to peace to the Korean Peninsula and around the world." The U.N.'s Ban Ki Moon concurred. China, North Korea's closest ally in the region, even offered a tepid criticism: "We hope relevant parties stay calm in order to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," said a spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

But, as commentators have noted, international censure falls on deaf ears in Pyongyang. As NPR's Lim said, "There's little left to sanction, and so far, international condemnation has done little to sway Pyongyang from its path." Sanctions on the poverty-stricken country will nonetheless be tightened unilaterally following the launch, according to reports.

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"It [the rocket] has been launched,'' a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry told AFP.

North Korea said a satellite had successfully been put into orbit in space, a claim US military officials said appeared to be true.

The rocket had followed its planned trajectory, with stages falling in expected areas, the BBC wrote.

The White House, which is concerned the launch is covering for ballistic missile activity, denounced the move as a "highly provocative act that threatens regional security," said the AP.

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Editor's Note: Rocket science and sushi do mix, apparently. This Dec. 7 GlobalPost story featured a Japanese sushi chef who once worked for Kim Jong Il, and who knows the Pyongyang power players' tastes in raw fish. Kenji Fujimoto also accurately predicted North Korea's rocket launch, which happened Dec. 12. Sushi diplomacy, anyone?

TOKYO, Japan — North Korea is hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to promoting itself as a workers' paradise. But the state's impressive propaganda machine aside, the information void has been largely filled by dissidents and the few outsiders to have gained access to the elite circle that runs the Hermit Kingdom.

The most unlikely member of that group is Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese sushi chef, who has succeeded in shedding light on the secretive regime where seasoned North Korea hands have failed.

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North Korea declared the launch of a rocket and satellite a success early Wednesday local time. Three hours later, the U.S. military confirmed that an object appeared to achieve orbit.

The White House called it a "highly provocative act."

On Saturday, North Korea had widened the dates during which it might conduct the launch of its Unha-3 rocket, citing a technical problem. Washington says the launch is a cover for testing technology for missiles that could be used to strike the United States. The previous four attempts all failed.

"It was a surprise in terms of the timing," said Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst with the RAND think tank. "They had talked about postponing for a week. To recover so quickly from technical problems suggests they have gotten good at putting together a missile."

North Korea has also conducted two nuclear tests since 2006, deepening international concern over its capabilities, although it is not believed to have mastered how to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

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Myanmar announced it would sign an international agreement that would require it to declare all nuclear facilities and materials. Although it would be up to Myanmar to decide what to declare, it could provide some answers concerning its acquisition of dual-use machinery and its military cooperation with Pyongyang that the U.S. and other nations regard as suspect.

President Thein Sein's agreement to allow more scrutiny by U.N. nuclear inspectors suggests a willingness to go beyond democratic reforms that have improved relations with Washington and culminated in Obama's visit this week, the first by a U.S. president to the country also known as Burma.

David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonproliferation group, said in an analysis it was a "remarkable decision."

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How about the small towns of rural Colorado? That’s the setting for “Red Dawn,” the 1984 piece of militia porn that pitted a group of American kids against the combined might of the invading armies of Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. Led by Patrick Swayze, they lived off the land and harvested what seemed to be a never-ending supply of rocket-propelled grenades, with which they blew up tanks and Soviet-American Friendship Centers.

The film was released in the height of the Cold War, and its ludicrous premise (best summed up as “Hey kids, let’s go fight an insurrection!”) fit well with the rest of the decade’s fear-mongering anti-Soviet propaganda and jingoistic paeans to American exceptionalism. Let’s not forget that this was the same year that Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

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Seoul announced Sunday it reached a deal with Washington that would allow it to nearly triple the range of its missiles to better cope with North Korean missile and nuclear threats. On Tuesday, North Korea called the deal a "product of another conspiracy of the master and the stooge" to "ignite a war" against the North.

In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, an unidentified spokesman at the powerful National Defense Commission said the North will bolster its military preparedness.

"We do not hide ... the strategic rocket forces are keeping within the scope of strike not only the bases of the puppet forces and the U.S. imperialist aggression forces' bases in the inviolable land of Korea but also Japan, Guam and the U.S. mainland," the spokesman said.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had no official comment on the North's statement, but Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intention of attacking North Korea.

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Power was not always Obama’s strong suit. When he ran for president in 2008, he appeared to friend and foe alike as Mr. Softy. He wanted out of the war in Iraq. He was no fan of nuclear weapons. He favored carrots over sticks when approaching America’s adversaries.

His opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton, tried to turn this hesitation to use hard power into a sign of a man too inexperienced to be entrusted with the presidency. In 2007, when Obama offered to meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, Clinton fired back that such a policy was “irresponsible and frankly naïve.” In February 2008, she went further with a TV ad that asked voters who should answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. Obama, she implied, lacked the requisite body parts -- muscle, backbone, cojones-- to make the hard presidential decisions in a crisis.

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Walking past the booths and examining the goods are Chinese, North Koreans and even some Europeans, who are exchanging business cards and sharing lively conversations -- North Korea is once again hosting an international trade fair, which opened Monday in Rason in the far northeast, a city seeking to sell itself as friendly to foreigners and a potential hub for international transportation, trade and tourism.

It's a scene not common in the rest of North Korea, where most business is state-run and interaction between foreigners and locals is strictly monitored.

The trade fair is an indication of how keen the insular nation is to attract foreign investment needed to reform its listless economy. Pyongyang has not publicly released detailed economic data for decades, but has made building the economy a focus of government policy since 2009. Rason, however, is one of North Korea's newly revamped special economic zones, governed by a separate set of laws and rules giving local officials more autonomy, and easier to access from the Chinese city of Yanji than from the North Korea capital of Pyongyang.

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