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North Korea's Prison Camps Are Now On Google Maps

Posted by Soulskill on from the follow-the-dirt-road-and-hang-a-left-at-the-Denny's dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "It's been nearly a decade since Shin Dong-hyuk, an ex-prisoner of North Korea's Camp 14, crawled over the electrocuted body of a friend lying dead on a fence, a boundary he was born inside of and lived within for 23 years. He made his way across the Chinese border on foot and was granted political asylum and citizenship in Seoul. Now, thanks to updated Google maps of the region, you can actually (if somewhat loosely) retrace the steps of his incredible escape. Through its Map Maker program, which crowdsources cartographic info, Google has published finer details of some North Korean roads. More notably, it has included shaded-in locations of the country's notorious prison camps. The data has flowed in from a few different sources, including defected North Korean expats now living in Seoul. Geographically-minded tourists and visitors of North Korea have weighed in, and historic map data from pre-partitioned Korea into has also been helpful. (Google maintains that the recent trip to Pyongyang by CEO Eric Schmidt had nothing to do with this project.)"

4 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. OpenStreetMap has better maps of North Korea by SWroclawski · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you look at OpenStreetMap's maps of North Korea in comparison to Google, you see that the OSM maps are of much higher quality, as well as being Free (unlike Google MapMaker):

    http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&lon=125.7375&lat=39.03865&zoom=12

  2. Re:So who wants to go visit? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    I mean I always read about westerners trying to sneak into the country.

    I can recall only a couple of cranks in recent years who tried to sneak in for missionary purposes or whatever. However, tourism in North Korea is a pretty ordinary thing, as much as Americans (who would have some difficult obtaining a visa) think it's somehow impenetrable. You fly in from China, are assigned to a group with a minder, and you get a tour of various impressive Communist sites and the North Korea side of the DMZ. You don't get to freely move about, but visiting North Korea holds some attraction for those who want to see the bizarre cult of personality state that it is before it (hopefully) disappears forever. There are myriad blogs on the web detailing people's trips.

  3. Kimjongilia by WGFCrafty · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you have netflix, I'd recommend Kimjongilia. It covers the stories of defectors, including Shin. Very well done.

  4. Re:One Day... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Informative

    What is disgusting is that the leaders of the communist party in N. Korea wanted this depravity to exist. What were and/or why were they thinking?

    "As long as I get to be boss, fuck it."
    (or something like that)