Weeks after Google Inc chairman Eric Schmidt’s secretive visit to North Korea, the firm has rolled out a detailed map of the isolated state that even labels some of its remote and infamous gulags.
Until now North Korea was pretty much a blank canvas to users of Google’s Map Maker application, which creates maps from data that is provided by the public and fact-checked in a similar process to that used by Wikipedia.
“For a long time, one of the largest places with limited map data has been North Korea, but today we are changing that,” Jayanth Mysore, a senior product manager at Google Map Maker, said in blog posting on Monday.
Mysore said the North Korea section had been completed with the help of a “community of citizen cartographers” working over a period of several years.
“While many people around the globe are fascinated with North Korea, these maps are especially important for the citizens of South Korea, who have ancestral connections or still have family living there,” he added.
With the two countries still technically at war, decent maps of the North are almost impossible to come by in South Korea.
Ironically, the people least able to benefit from the Google publication are the North Koreans themselves, who live in one of the most isolated and highly censored societies on the planet.
The North has a domestic Intranet, but it is cut off from the rest of the world, allowing its very limited number of Web users to exchange state-approved information and little more.
Access to the full-blown Internet is for the super-elite only, meaning a few hundred people or maybe 1,000 at most, experts estimate.
The Google version offers a detailed map of the capital Pyongyang, showing hospitals, subway stops and schools.
Outside the capital, the detail is sketchier, but noticeable on an overview of the country are a series of city-sized, gray-colored areas, which, when zoomed in on, are identified as sprawling re-education camps.
As many as 200,000 people are estimated to be detained in the North’s vast gulag system, many under a guilt-by-association system that punishes those related to someone perceived as an enemy of the state.
Google has helped cast a light on the location of these camps before, through its popular Google Earth satellite imagery service.
Groups and individuals involved with human rights research on North Korea have used the satellite pictures to confirm the location of known camps and uncover the existence of new ones.
The release of Google’s new North Korea map came just weeks after Schmidt returned from a controversial trip to Pyongyang as part of a US “humanitarian” mission.
On his return, Schmidt said he had told officials in the North that the country would never develop unless it embraces Internet freedom.
Schmidt’s trip was criticized by the US Department of State, which said it was ill-timed in the wake of the North’s recent banned rocket launch.
South Korean officials yesterday welcomed the Google map initiative.
“We think that this could be an opportunity for the world to know more about North Korea and an opportunity for the North to open itself more,” a South Korean Unification Ministry spokeswoman said.
The concept also drew praise from some of the South Koreans, cited by Mysore, with family roots in the North.
“It sounds great. I’ll be happy to see the map of my hometown,” said Lee Nak-ye, who heads an association for Koreans who moved from North to South.
Lee, 80, left his home in the eastern port city of Hamhung when the 1950-1953 Korean War broke out and can “only dream” of reuniting with the relatives he left behind.
“I’ll tell other friends at the association about this,” Lee said. “Most of them are too old to learn how to use the Internet thing, though.”
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS