The Korean Central News Agency website that appears to be hosted from inside North Korea has been given a redesign. The new page has a fresher feel and makes much more use of pictures than the previous site, which was first discovered in early October.

Also new is the addition of Korean-language articles to the previously-available English and Spanish news.

The front page includes an image, the day’s headlines and links to seven category menus. I had problems with some of the links and the menus when accessed via Firefox, but they function with Internet Explorer.

It still has to be accessed via an ugly all-numeric address but new is a copyright line that states:

?Copyright © 2000-2010 by www.star.edu.kp all rights reserved.

This is the first time I’ve seen the name “www.star.edu.kp.” The Star could refer to “Star JV,” the DPRK-Thai joint venture that runs the North Korean IP address space. That company is planning to use “www.star.net.kp” for it’s own homepage. But the “edu” typically signifies an educational domain.

At present all KP domain names remain offline. The German server that was responsible for serving the dot-kp top-level domain has been offline for several months.