Twitter locks down DPRK News, famous parody account mocking North Korea's furious yet florid news agency (Updated)

North Korea's press office is famously bellicose, hurling bizarre insults and denunciations at the hermit kingdom's adversaries. My own parody of it, the North Korea Press Release Generator, had its time in the sun of Mount Paektu. But far better is @DPRK_News, a Twitter account regularly commenting on topical events in a totalitarian stiff talk so perfectly imitative that it has fooled countless celebrities, politicians and journalists into thinking it was real—no matter how absurd or deranged the comical subject matter.

The authors—mostly @PresidentDawg and @NinjaDerrick, recently joined by @BelarusMiniInfo—have even fooled The New York Times.

Sadly, Twitter has just locked the account, citing its rules against impersonation.

"I'm sorry to say effective immediately @DPRK_News is defunct," wrote @PresidentDawg, an attorney named Patrick. "I founded the account in 2009. Twitter decided today that it violates their rules. I'm not going to label a parody a parody. That moots the point. It gives away the joke. The DPRK never complained. One of you did."

The lock means that the account is still readable, but its authors cannot update it until they agree to add the disclaimer.

UPDATE: DPRK_News is back, without having to add a joke-ruining disclaimer. This is an excellent shift in policy by Twitter, acknowledging (I hope) that its rules against impersonation need not be as strictly applied to organizations as it is to people.