Britain hands North Korea £740,000 in aid including funds to encourage Kim Jong-Un to loosen up secretive grip on net and media

THE UK has handed Kim Jong-un £740,000 in aid – a chunk of which will help beleaguered North Korean journalists ‘connect to the web’.

Most of the taxpayers' money was paid to the nuke-wielding crackpot country by the Foreign Office after the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.

The aid is part of a project to help increase interaction with the unpredictable hermit state and international media organisations, reports the Mirror.

The project is also aiming to open up news reporting in the propaganda-infested communist country in which most of the population have little or no access to the internet.

Luddite North Korean journos will receive £22,650 from the British government while teachers in the totalitarian regime are getting £350,000 of taxpayers’ money.

Dictator Kim’s cash windfall totalling £740,000 was revealed by the Department for International Development who released the figures.

The rest of the money is made of aid for the ‘rural disabled’, funding for ‘entrepreneur workshops’ and a scheme which will help teach Korean officials understand ‘UK values’.

In 2014, the portly despot is alleged to have hacked film studio Sony Pictures after being angered by the comedy movie The Interview which centred on a fictional plot to kill the North Korean leader.

The hack was followed by terror threats against theatres screening the film resulting in the studio pulling the movie from general release.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “The projects we carry out in North Korea are part of our policy of critical engagement, and are used to promote British values and demonstrate to the North Korean people that engaging with the UK and the outside world is an opportunity rather than a threat.

“We conduct a range of small-scale project work, many of which help to improve the lives of the most vulnerable members of society.”

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