Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.)"

20 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Old News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This has been on the iOS platforms since the last update. I asked Siri for riving direction to Sam's Hamburger shack and ended up in a NK concentration camp. Kinda hard to explain to Lil Un, but after a few months I was let go.

  2. 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

  3. Check out the reviews for Hwasong Gulag by futhermocker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seems to be a pretty cool resort
    http://goo.gl/maps/bVK4C

    --
    KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
  4. 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.

  5. You know what's not on Google Maps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The FEMA death camps that have been set up to imprison free and liberated Americans as Obama's Atheistic Muslim Communist Fascism is implemented in this country.

    The abortion-mill brothels will also not be shown. Because Google is in it on it, as is NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing. It's all part of the conspiracy with the Reverse Vampires and Doctor Evil.

    1. Re:You know what's not on Google Maps? by gmhowell · · Score: 2

      The FEMA death camps that have been set up to imprison free and liberated Americans as Obama's Atheistic Muslim Communist Fascism is implemented in this country.

      The abortion-mill brothels will also not be shown. Because Google is in it on it, as is NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing. It's all part of the conspiracy with the Reverse Vampires and Doctor Evil.

      Can't tell if troll or if Alex Jones forgot his password.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    2. Re:You know what's not on Google Maps? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      The juxtaposition of your complaint and your tagline is something I find incredibly humorous. Lighten up, pal.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  6. One Day... by sycodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When NK falls and the full extent to which its people have been oppressed is revealed, the entire civilized world will hang its head in shame over how long this abomination has been allowed to exist.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:One Day... by Hentes · · Score: 2

      The entire civilized world can't do much while China is backing them. Sad as it is, it's not worth a nuclear war.

    2. Re:One Day... by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      as opposed to a single warlord, starvation and a humanitarian disaster?

    3. Re:One Day... by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      there's also the merit of status quo, which is part of why nothing is being done about it.

      that is, many north koreans know full well that if the curtain was to come down they would in jail and history books - if they were lucky, if unlucky they'd be executed(and because that's the way they roll in NK that's probably what they believe would happen to them). this is not just one or two north koreans but tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, who would need to be prosecuted. so it is believed that if the curtain starts coming down they might try to dispose of the problem by making the camps disappear(by killing everyone, maybe even the staff) rather than face the music.

      that's part of the tragedy of the situation, that it's gone so long in such massive scale that it's impossible to just wind it down bit by bit. so opening north korea bit by bit like ussr was opened isn't going to happen(harshest ussr gulags, relocations and policies had been closed for couple of decades prior to winding down of the ussr).

      just removing the government and letting it implode might be the best thing really - north koreans (like ussr citizens were) are already accustomed to keeping care of themselves, the army already taxes people like warlords and street thugs would so that wouldn't change one bit either.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    4. Re:One Day... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2

      When NK falls and the full extent to which its people have been oppressed is revealed,

      Here is a start - from the only person known to have been born in and escape from one of these prison camps.

      the entire civilized world will hang its head in shame over how long this abomination has been allowed to exist.

      I agree. And it isn't just a case of china backing them or seoul being vulnerable. Why aren't we pushing for a full peace treaty - like we've ended every other official war - instead of just an armistice? The whole "the war is not over" thing is the main pillar of NK's pathology. I'm not so naive as to believe a peace treaty would magically make things all lovey-dovey. But it would be progress that does not require military force.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    5. 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)

    6. Re:One Day... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      so it is believed that if the curtain starts coming down they might try to dispose of the problem by making the camps disappear(by killing everyone, maybe even the staff) rather than face the music.

      That worked out real well for the surviving Nazis, I hear.

      in any case, some of you may have noticed that China is no longer giving carte-blanche to the DPRK:

      In response to UN Security Council Resolution 2087 which was approved on Wednesday [2013-01-23, China time], North Korea vowed that it will carry out a "high-level" nuclear test. This may not be mere angry words, because South Korea says preparation for North Korea's new nuclear test is already in progress.

      Wednesday's UN resolution condemned North Korea's rocket launch in December and expanded existing sanctions. After putting a lot of effort into amendments for the draft resolution, China also voted for it.

      It seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts. It criticized China without explicitly naming it in its statement yesterday [2013-01-24]: "Those big countries, which are obliged to take the lead in building a fair world order, are abandoning without hesitation even elementary principles, under the influence of the US' arbitrary and high-handed practices, and failing to come to their senses."

      China has a dilemma: We are further away from the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and there's no possible way for us to search for a diplomatic balance between North Korea and South Korea, Japan and the US.

      China should be more relaxed and reduce our expectations on the effect of our strategies toward the peninsula. We should have a pragmatic attitude to deal with the problems and pursue the optimal ratio between our investment of resources and strategic gains.

      China can neither take one side of the peninsula conflict like the US and Japan nor dream of staying aloof. We should readily accept that China is involved and may offend one side or both sides.

      China's role and position are clear when discussing North Korea issue in the UN Security Council. If North Korea engages in further nuclear tests, China will not hesitate to reduce its assistance to North Korea. ...

      China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of China's position.

      Translation: "We're starting to figure out that there's precious little advantage to backing up NK much longer, and Kim3 is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise."

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  7. A longer version of his story by Renevith · · Score: 2

    I followed the links through to a Guardian review of the book about Shin, only to find "This content has been removed as our copyright has expired." WTF?

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine is a bit more sane and has the full story: http://web.archive.org/web/20120320021739/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/16/escape-north-korea-prison-camp

  8. Doesn't it bother anyone else that... by m1ss1ontomars2k4 · · Score: 2

    The maps for China don't actually align to the satellite image? The maps are reasonably accurate, but they're off by a few miles or so, it looks like. But then the border lines up with the satellite image, and the maps for North Korea, right across the border, line up perfectly with the satellite image. Is it just me? Am I seeing things?

    Here's a portion of the border which demonstrates the problem: http://goo.gl/maps/ObMDJ

    1. Re:Doesn't it bother anyone else that... by Qzukk · · Score: 2

      I tried it in chrome, and if you click the map/satellite icon to toggle back and forth, the river quite clearly moves back and forth by about the width of the river. Its easier to see the problem if you go west a tiny bit from China's side of the border where there's visible roads and buildings on the satellite image and the map image shows the same roads but farther east. The landmass on the NK side of the line looks more like a sandbar than an island so its probably less defined at high tide (the map version is a lot smaller than the satellite version, especially on the south side of the island.

      The country border marking lines up nicely with the canals dug in the satellite map and doesn't move between the two maps (the canals themselves move), so I'm thinking that the "map" version is off.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  9. 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.

  10. I doubt it by 1800maxim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The civilized world has been progressively removed from reality and will be too busy chatting on Facebook, worried about latest stock market fluctuations, and getting semi-affordable gas at the pump.

    Typical response: "NK free? Yay! What movie u goin 2 see?"

  11. Re:So who wants to go visit? by buchner.johannes · · Score: 2

    A great trip report is the Google Talk by Siegfried S. Hecker, nuclear scientist (Los Alamos) and advises the US government on the nuclear proliferation w.r.t. North Korea. And on one of the last trips, they proudly show him what they have.

    --
    NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.