East Asian nation bans Instagram

Reports reveal that North Korea has taken secrecy a step further by blacklisting Instagram in a bid to stop embarrassing news leaking out of the country.

Sources say Instagram users who attempted to open the photo sharing app were confronted with a message which reads “Warning! You can’t connect to this website because it’s a blacklist site.”

According to reports in the Daily Mirror, some observers have claimed the reason behind the ban is connected with the recent hotel blaze which has never been mentioned in state-run media.

On June 11, a posh hotel called the Koryo caught fire. Despite attempts to keep the inferno secret, photographs leaked out of the country and were published in newspapers all over the globe.