What is Google's Eric Schmidt doing in North Korea?

What is one of the world's most prominent advocates of internet freedom doing in a country where unregulated access to information is generally either impossible or criminal?

The "private" visit by the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, to North Korea raises many questions, not least because he embodies something that regimes in Pyongyang have spent decades resisting with all the power at their disposal.

For the vast majority of North Korea's 24 million people, the global information revolution may just as well never have happened, especially when it comes to communication with the outside world.

In a country where radios are hardwired to tune exclusively to state-run broadcasts, surfing the internet is, for most people, an entirely alien concept.

So while many observers puzzle over Schmidt's motives, just as many are asking what lies behind Pyongyang's courtship of the Google chairman.

Schmidt is part of a "private humanitarian mission" led by former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, which is ostensibly focused on the case of a detained US citizen awaiting trial for alleged crimes against the state.