SYDNEY (AP)

Australia was accused of censorship yesterday for denying visas to North Korean artists whose works are on display in a regional exhibition, but the government says the art comes from Pyongyang's propaganda machine and its creators are not welcome.

Critics said the decision is a missed opportunity to help open one of the world's most closed societies. North Korea's regime prohibits the Internet as well as outside phone networks, radio and TV, and the communist government strictly controls travel abroad. It has also drawn international ire for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In recent years, sporting and cultural performances such as the New York Philharmonic's concert last year in the capital have provided the best opportunity for 'soft diplomacy' that keeps the country engaged with the outside world, even if formal ties are strained.

Formal diplomacy is also moving forward this week, as US President Barack Obama's special envoy to North Korea headed to Pyongyang to try to persuade the government to return to nuclear disarmament talks.

In Australia, five artists from the Mansudae Art Studio were invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Queensland state to talk about 15 pieces the organisers commissioned for the exhibition, which includes work from more than 100 artists from 25 countries.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith rejected the artists' applications for an exception to a visa ban on North Korea, part of targeted sanctions imposed in 2006 in response to the country's steps to develop atomic weapons.

Speaking out

Organisers first spoke out about the ban as the exhibition opened on Saturday.

Smith's department said in a statement released yesterday that issuing visas for Mansudae studio artists would have sent the wrong message.

"The studio reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda aimed at glorifying and supporting the North Korean regime," the statement said.

Some of Mansudae's approximately 1,000 artists devote their time completely to painting portraits of Kim Il Sung, the late founder of the Stalinist state who handed power to his son, current leader Kim Jong Il, and who is the subject of a government-fuelled personality cult.

Nick Bonner, a Beijing-based British businessman and art dealer who helped curate the exhibition, said all art studios in North Korea - like most other things in the hard-line state - were government organisations, but that did not mean every work was political.

Only one of the works commissioned for the exhibition was in the socialist realism style that most people associate with communist propaganda, a large mosaic depicting a scene in a steel mill.The mosaic was prominently positioned at the start of the North Korean display "so that audience members will be able to perceive the radical nature of the works that come later," the Queensland state Art Gallery says in its notes on the display.