Phase II Map Completed

One year ago today I published Phase I of my #AccessDPRK Mapping Project. I began mapping North Korea in late 2012, little did I know how much of an effort it would take or how expansive a map would result from the over 2,500 hours of work. I won't recount why I started, you can read more about that here, but I do want to stress that this map has become the largest and most comprehensive map of North Korea publicly available, by far.

The Google Earth file contains 53,722 placemarks covering three main areas of interest: the military, monuments, and domestic/economic sites. There are 9,567 military sites, 8,859 monument markers representing 9,879 individual monuments, and 35,296 domestic sites. Because I started mapping after I discovered Curtis Melvin's map and because I updated and incorporated his North Korea Uncovered into mine, I would like to say that of the 53,722 places, 8,430 of them came from North Korea Uncovered.

The file is divided according to each province and each province is divided into those three main areas (some have an extra division). Those three divisions are further sub-divided into item-specific folders (anti-aircraft artillery, dams, palaces, etc.). Typically, the military division has around 20 folders and the domestic division has around 40. The monument division is just a single folder containing all of the monuments in its respective province. There is also an "Additional Items" folder that has things like all the country's airports and a list of mountains. And, there is a file dedicated to the De-Militarized Zone with 1,401 places marked.

Because of the size of the KMZ file (4.76 MB - which is huge by Google Earth terms), don't try to view the whole thing at once. Expand the file and pick out which province you'd like to review and then what item folders you want. There are many ways to explore the information within, just take a little time to get used to the layout so you don't accidentally crash Google Earth (although, most modern computers can handle having the entire file open, it may be sluggish).

The next part of #AccessDPRK is to create a series of topic-specific files. For example, the country's electrical grid. This will allow those with narrower interests to view the information they want without the need to dig through mountains of data. However, there is no firm time set for me to build and publish those maps. After working on this for so long, I'm in the mood to take things more slowly now.

Map showing every monument in North Korea. Click for larger view (opens in new window).

[Note: the download link to the 2017 map has been removed as the 2021 version was made available.]

Below is a breakdown of the number of items per province and other main folders. As soon as I can I will also add some graphics showing how many of each item there are (like the fact there's active 1,539 anti-aircraft artillery batteries).


Phase II Complete Item Counts - March 5, 2017

Chagang Province = 2,695
   Military: 162
   Monument: 544 markers rep. 585 monuments
   Domestic: 1,989

Kangwon Province = 4,443
   Military: 1,131
   Monument: 762 markers rep. 928 monuments
   Domestic: 2,550

N. Hamgyong Province = 4,690
   Military: 450
   Monument: 765 markers rep. 796 monuments
   Domestic: 3,475

S. Hamgyong Province = 6,300
   Military: 627
   Monument: 1,053 markers rep. 1,154 monuments
   Domestic: 4,620

N. Hwanghae Province = 5,833
   Military: 1,347
   Monument: 946 markers rep. 1,100 monuments
   Domestic: 3,540

S. Hwanghae Province = 6,304
   Military: 1,008
   Monument: 1,054 markers rep. 1,146 monuments
   Domestic: 4,242

N. Pyongan Province = 5,581
   Military: 716
   Monument: 1,049 markers rep. 1,145 monuments
   Domestic: 3,816

S. Pyongan Province = 7,002
   Military: 1,134
   Monument: 1,205 markers rep. 1,325 monuments
   Domestic: 4,663

Pyongyang District = 6,150
   Military: 1,129
   Monument: 1,049 markers rep. 1,230 monuments
   Water supply: 290
   Domestic: 3,682

Rason District = 531
   Military: 42
   Monument: 94 markers rep. 99 monuments
   Domestic: 395

Ryanggang Province = 2,183 total
   Military: 95
   Monument: 338 markers rep. 371 monuments
   Domestic: 1,626
   Mt. Paektu: 126 - inc. 2 duplicates not inc. in counts elsewhere

DMZ-area Road Blocks: 198
DMZ: 1,401 + 394 miles of fence
Tall Mountains: 245
Airports: 127 (108 runways and 19 waypoints)
UN Joint Security Area: 5
Border Crossings: 24
Large intersections: 10


**********Grand Totals**********
Grand Total: 53,722 markers
   Military: 8,201 + DMZ/RBs/Airports = 9,567
   Monuments: 8,859 markers representing 9,879 monuments
   Domestic (inc. Border/Intersections/Mts) = 35,296


NOTE: AccessDPRK maps, articles, or other creations may not be used for commercial purposes without the express authorization of Jacob Bogle.


--Jacob Bogle, 3/5/17
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New Missile Test & Mapping Update

With Phase I having been published around 6 months ago and the recent mid-range ballistic missile test on Sept. 5, I figured I should give an update on where Phase II stands.

I'd like to quickly touch on the missile tests. According to CNN, the tests were carried out in Hwangju County, North Hwanghae Province (25 miles south of Pyongyang center). Korean Central Television released a YouTube video of the missiles being fired. In the video, you can see that the missiles were fired from mobile launchers positioned on a major highway with a highway tunnel in the background. In another scene a cell or radio tower is also visible.

Given the positioning of the camera, it's difficult to really gauge how far away the tunnel is from the launchers, however you can see a "turn around" spot near the tunnel and a bit farther back toward the launchers, you can see a section of pavement that looks a bit darker than the rest. This is typical of bridges. There's only one highway section that features all of these things near Hwangju.

So, this stretch of highway would seem to be the most likely location of the tests. Hwangju is also the home of the Third Air Combat Command which is responsible for the defense of the DMZ and southern portions of the country, which means they would have access to ballistic missiles. Additionally (whether or not these missiles came from here), the hills around Hwangju are filled with tunnels, hardened artillery sites, military units, and military storage facilities. That said, I cant't find any section of highway in the entire province that seems to look exactly like the video footage.

Mapping Update

As I mentioned in the Phase I release post, Phase II (which I'm working on now) will include a map of all the schools, town halls, "Palace's of Culture" (Juche study halls), and other buildings of interest in the country. I started mapping these places part-way into Phase I, meaning that I had to go over the rest of the country another time to get all the sites I hadn't originally marked.

The blue dots cover all the areas I have had to re-map (which adds up to roughly half of the country). In addition, I decided to go over Pyongyang entirely for a second time because of how dense the city is. My goal in all of this is to not miss greater than 10% of any given type of item (cell towers, schools etc) nationwide.

The Google Earth file size for Phase I is 2.7 MB and contains over 28,000 places. The current Phase II file adds a further megabyte, and I'm not even finished working on it! The file for Pyongyang itself has nearly doubled in size.

To help make the project of greater use to people, I have been scouring different sources for additional information on the various sites I've marked. If the name of a school is known, I want that placemark to be given the school's name. If a fancy looking new building pops up, I want to be able to tell you what it is, and so forth. Since I began this project over 3 years ago, I have also gone back through some of the folders and updated them, better categorized some places (particularly military sites), and worked to make everything uniform in terms of descriptions and the icons used.

The work for Phase II really comprises two parts: the first part is all the new mapping I'm doing, the second part is taking Curtis Melvin's North Korea Uncovered file (which is now over 7 years old) and updating any changes that have happened to the 8,100 sites he mapped. This also includes making corrections to places that were incorrectly identified (there aren't many, but accuracy is important) as well as fixing a problem created by Google Earth itself.

When Google Earth has updated imagery added, sometimes the coordinates don't mesh perfectly and, particularly in South Hwanghae Province, around 2006 the coordinate system was adjusted. The practical meaning is that many of the places marked there by Curtis are now off by as much as 1,000 feet. So I need to go through all of them and move them to their "corrected" positions. Oh, and I have to do the same for the large military-focused file created by Google Earth user "Planeman_"  and then collate his and Melvin's files because each project, while largely covering the same places, did map out some spots the other person missed. All of this adds up to a mountain of work.

The work of Phase I was completed in Nov. 2015 and released in March 2016. Since then, I have been able to go over nearly all the places I needed to. I only have about 20% of Pyongyang left. I have also already gone through thousands of sites marked by Melvin and Planeman_, though there is still much work remaining on that front. Some of the cool things that my comprehensive map will be able to bring to the general public is: 24 surface-to-air missile sites previously un-mapped by the earlier projects, the entire network of cell towers (very few existed during the time Melvin was working on his project), an updated map of their missile testing sites, more detailed maps of various palaces, a much more detailed map of Pyongyang with hundreds of buildings marked, and lots of added bits of information on countless other sites (including nuclear facilities).

I have a two week international vacation coming up soon and then of course the holidays are getting closer and closer, but I am really hoping to be able to have my Phase II mapping completed, the corrections/updates made to North Korea Uncovered, and the combining of Phase II, NKU, and Planeman_'s projects into a single master file with no duplicates and as few holes as possible by the end of 2016, if not sooner.

I'd like to thank everyone for their continuing support and patience. This has turned into a major project that has required thousands of hours of work and research. I hope it will be useful and live up to expectations once completed.

--Jacob Bogle, 9/7/2016
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Phase 1 Map Complete!

AccessDPRK Phase I Release

Three and a half years ago I embarked on the ambitious project of mapping the whole of North Korea; a project called "AccessDPRK". I have always had a fascination with authoritarian regimes and for some reason my specific interest in North Korea began to grow a little over three years ago. I also have had a deep love of maps and geography since I was a very young child.

As my interests piqued, I started using Google Earth to look at North Korea. What I found were informative “community placemarks” marking the location of a monument or military site. I looked into who had created those placemarks, which seemed to cover the entire country, and found that they were part of a project called “North Korea Uncovered”. Created over the course of two years (2007-09), by George Mason doctoral candidate Curtis Melvin and a few volunteers, the project created the most comprehensive map of the country to-date. It included thousands of placemarks (approx. 9,000) – monuments, factories, palaces, artillery batteries, ancient tombs, and so much more. There was also another person, a Google Earth user known only as “Planeman_”, who created a map of supposedly all the artillery sites in North Korea.

However, as I explored these large files, I quickly discovered that there were massive holes in the data. While they marked some locations of each general type of item, the resulting creation was far from truly comprehensive. For some reason this offended me (in a lighthearted way), and since I am slightly obsessive and had an inherent interest in the country, I decided to take it upon myself to make the most comprehensive (at its fullest meaning) map of North Korea any private citizen has ever made by going and marking all of the locations not marked in Melvin’s project.

Once completed, I would release the information in the form of a Google Earth file to the public via my website, blog, and the Google Earth Forum. The goal being to expose the entirety of country to the world. To show people not just how the physical infrastructure of the nation is laid out (like power plants), but to also give a glimpse of daily life by having marketplaces, parks, as well as historical locations lost to Western knowledge, and much, much more. After the completion of “Phase I”, I also intend to review Curtis Melvin’s file and make any necessary corrections to it (since it is now six years old) and combine the two projects into a single “master file”. Little did I know what this full endeavor would require.

On Nov. 28, 2015, I finished the initial mapping phase of my project. After three years, over a thousand hours of active mapping work, and delving into thousands of pages worth of material to assist in creating this map, I now have seen every square mile of the country – indeed every home. The resulting Google Earth file is nearly 3 times the size of Melvin’s and contains 28,164 additional placemarks.

The file is divided according to each of North Korea’s primary administrative regions. Each is then further divided into 3 main categories: Military, Monuments, and Domestic. The Military and Domestic categories are subdivided into several sub-categories, such has anti-aircraft artillery sites, military bases, naval sites, and on the domestic side, dams, electrical substations, schools, factories, etc. All told, there are over 50 subcategories. Beyond those province specific folders, there’s are folders exclusively dedicated to the Demilitarized Zone, the country’s airports, historic places, etc.

One reason why this has taken so long is that as I would go around the country, I would find new categories of places that were numerous enough to have a national impact, like irrigation pumping stations and radar sites. So as I would add these new categories, I would have to go back an re-map formerly "completed" areas. 

The ultimate end of this project is not yet known. Like the development of the Internet, I’m not fully aware of the possibilities that can arise once people start mining the data. You could create a comprehensive map of North Korea’s electrical grid, you could discover their current defensive military strategies and find holes in their air defense system, you could work out how their internal security system is integrated across various transportation modes, and I’m sure many other things.

In addition to mapping, I’ve also written dozens of posts for this blog as well as 6 Wikipedia articles which have been read a combined 400,000 times and translated into multiple languages.

My main wish is that this can be used to help the world see that North Koreans are normal human beings who have been held hostage by their government. And that this provides some insight into how that government works to further the work of others in opening up North Korea, and one-day help bring North Korea into the 21^st century with a respect for freedom.

Phase II is already underway, and I have marked over 5,000 new places thus far. These include public schools, universities, museums, theaters, town halls, and other "buildings of interest". This is going to take some time to complete, but I'm hoping to have everything (including the "master file") finished and ready to be published by the end of the year, if not sooner. 

Here are a few specific item counts:

Anti-aircraft artillery batteries: 587    Hardened Artillery Sites: 626    Military bases: 938    Monuments: 6,720   Dams: 1,169   Communication towers: 747   Electrical substations: 736
Factories: 470    Marketplaces: 225    Ancient sites: 112

Get the File!

If you want to discuss the project on social media, please use the hashtag #AccessDPRK either on Twitter or Facebook. I welcome comments and suggestions, as well as new information.

To access the Phase I Google Earth file, you can either visit my file archive here and click the download button for "AccessDPRK Phase I_Finish_V1-March-5-2016.kmz" or download it directly by clicking this link. To view the file you must have Google Earth on your computer/device. NOTE: this is a large file (over 28,000 items). For some computers Google Earth might freeze or crash if you try to have every province open at once. Just go through them one by one if you're unsure. 

All Google Earth KMZ files relating to this mapping project are hosted on my Google Site https://sites.google.com/site/mymappingprojects/access-north-korea

-- Jacob Bogle, 3/5/2016

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