AccessDPRK: About #AccessDPRK

What has become the mapping project #AccessDPRK began as a hobby in late 2012 and slowly evolved over the next year or so into what has now become the largest open-source mapping project of North Korea that's available to the general public.

While the #AccessDPRK project started with myself, Jacob Bogle, and remains a largely individual endeavor, many people have given various levels of information support over the years, such as North Korea expert and author Joseph S. Bermudez. I have also been able to lean on my library containing tens of thousands of pages worth of material from around the world to help in this work.

If I were to write a short "mission statement" it would be this:

#AccessDPRK is not about fast-breaking news. It’s about methodically exposing the country and the changes happening inside through public domain satellite imagery and information. It is about advancing the goals of open-source intelligence and democratizing access to information about the country. This may take the form of small articles and tweets detailing the growth of a military base, or it may take the form of long articles discussing cultural changes. Openness and quality are the main focus, not prodigious content creation.

For some additional information and history, check out:
Mapping Project Update - Feb. 2013
Phase I Map Complete - March 2016
Phase II Map Complete - March 2017
Phase III (the final map) - Jan. 2021 (subsequently updated in 2023)

(Note: images, databases, articles, or any other creation of this project are not for commercial use unless permission is expressly granted by Jacob Bogle. If you have any usage or copyright questions, please contact me at jacob_bogle AT yahoo.com)

Over the years, the project has been the subject of news, has been used as a reference, and helped support various works.
Some of these include:

'A Sense of Terror Stronger than a Bullet,' the Closing of North Korea 2018-2023 - Human Rights Watch, March 7, 2024
North Korea: The Last Transition Economy? - OECD (2020, Paper No. 1607)
North Korean Conventional Artillery - RAND Corp. (2020)
13 North Korean underground naval sites identified - Radio Free Asia, May 2020 (in Korean)
North Korea uranium plant may be dumping toxic waste into river - UPI, August 2019

Four Problems on the Korean Peninsula - RAND Corps. (2019)

North creates Panmunjom replica - Asiae.co.kr (in Korean) (2019)
The Korean Peninsula: Three Dangerous Scenarios - RAND Corp. (2018)
Coastal Artillery Base Collapses - The Sun (and affiliates) (2018)
A new Korean War would kill more US military personnel than you might expect - Washington Post
North Korea Leadership Facilities - GlobalSecurity.org

Puam-dong Navy Base - GlobalSecurity.org

Words of Support

"Jacob Bogle is an amazing, hardworking, and extremely creative open source information analyst who has a unique knack for catching things that others following North Korea miss, and would likely not discover apart from Jacob's reporting. He has done extraordinary work with commercial satellite imagery, much of it obtainable via Google Earth. Of particular note is the amazing mapping effort covering all of North Korea as a Google Earth viewable file (the most comprehensive map of North Korea available in the public domain)."

- Frank V. Pabian, Nuclear Chief Inspector for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during ground inspections in Iraq (1996-98) and recipient of the US Intelligence Community Seal Medal

"Jacob Bogle's AccessDPRK mapping project is extremely impressive! And truly shows a tremendous amount of work."
-Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., internationally recognized analyst and award-winning author. He is concurrently senior fellow for Imagery Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), senior adviser and analyst for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), and author for IHS Markit.

Quick Project Stats (currently)

Articles: 180

Phase III Military Sites Mapped: 13,800 (for Pro version)

Phase III Monuments Mapped: 12,375 (for Pro version)

Phase III Domestic Sites Mapped: 44,334 (for Pro version)

Data, mapping, and other services provided to