What's The Point?

I have been talking about North Korea and mapping the country for over four years now, and a question people ask me fairly often is, 'what's the point?' My normal answers tend to revolve around my own inherent interest in the country and in mapping, however, there is a far more concrete value to this endeavor than simply satiating my curiosity.

North Korea is more than just some rouge state hellbent on gaining nuclear weapons. It's a dynamic country with 25 million people, all of whom share a 2,100 year history with 50 million of their southern brethren. And, yes, they also have a deep military state that is always seeking ways to hide their more dangerous activities. And because of all of this, things change - and much remains unknown. Current collections of nation-wide data are years out of date and resources like Google Maps are often woefully inadequate.

Because their military activities tend to get the outside world to pay attention more than anything, I think the best example of the benefits of the #AccessDPRK Mapping Project is to show how some of these military areas have drastically changed over the last decade.

This image shows each of the 318 active anti-aircraft artillery batteries in Pyongyang.

And this shows each of the 108 decommissioned artillery batteries in the area.

Because of the reliance on older maps and information, just about every crowd-sourced mapping site (Wikimapia, Openstreet, etc) has these inactive places marked. Several of them have been completely demolished and turned into farm land but exists on maps as artillery sites!

It's not just Pyongyang. I have located 386 decommissioned artillery sites all over North Korea, many of them, unfortunately, are on maps. Furthermore, of the 1,358 known active sites, some 500 aren't on any map.

On the domestic side, hundreds of additional dams and hydroelectric power stations can be accounted for. Here are some in Chagang Province:

And speaking of the shared history of Korea, #AccessDPRK now has 346 ancient sites mapped - an increase of 119 new places found since my article on the subject back in February 2016. As far as I have been able to find, at least half of these sites aren't on any maps available online (or anywhere else that I can find). This doesn't include hundreds of centuries old burial mounds and tombs either.

Furthermore, the project will also allow people to see some of the tremendous natural changes that have occurred, like an enormous landslide in the ecologically important Mt. Chilbo National Park, or the damage done in recent flooding.

It would be difficult to detail every value of a map with over 50,000 places marked, but I hope I've adequately expressed the point of this effort.

--Jacob Bogle 1/27/17

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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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Update 2 + Sightseeing

I now have files started on all provinces, expanded my file on the DMZ and creating a new folder to deal solely with road blocks in and around the DMZ.

I've also re-organized each file to make them easier to use once they're published. Originally I simply had 3-4 categories for each area but that meant they were enormous and if someone only wanted to view train stations they would have had to un-click all the other placemarks. When I began, I had no idea just how many places would need to be marked. So now the main categories for all files are: Military, Monuments and Domestic but they each will have sub-categories, although there may be some differences dependent on the region.

Sub-categories will usually include:
Domestic - Irrigation & Dams, Road & Rail tunnels, Sub-stations, Fishing villages, Town signs, Burial mounds, Compounds, Road Blocks, Unidentified/Unknown items
Military - Coastal positions, AAA sites, Bunkers/Storage
Monuments will not have any sub-categories.

Also, I did a full count and to-date I have marked over 3,260 new places.

Now, let's have a bit of fun and do some sightseeing. As always, simply click on an image to enlarge it.

First there's this naturally made island in the northwest which looks remarkably similar to the real Korean Peninsula.

I wasn't the first person to find this island which would normally mean I wouldn't post it but I find it most intriguing and thought you would as well. Similarly, some of the other locations in this post have been known about for years but they're still interesting and we're "sightseeing" anyways.

Here's an example of the ~3,200 "Towers of Eternal Life" which were erected in every town and village after the death of Kim Il-sung.[1]

This is another monument. Well, actually there are two, the tower (right) and what is most probably a mural (center) of either Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il.

Here is one of the few working factories in the country.

Based on close-up imagery the factory looks like it was much larger in the past and as the North Korean economy flat-lined many of the buildings were torn down or fell into disrepair. There is still evidence of some production going on given the dark smudges on the undamaged roofs caused by pollution.

This image shows a large communications tower and shadow.

Korean's (both north and south) are traditionally a Confucian society. Part of that entails burial mounds instead of the below ground burials common to Western culture.[2] Here is an example of one such mound.

It is impossible to tell how old this mound is, but it is likely the person who died was either wealthy or an important figure in the region the mound is located in. During the famine, also known as the Arduous March, the bulk of the 1 million+ dead were buried in mass graves or in smaller, irregularly shaped burial mounds. These can be seen on almost every hill in the country. I suppose this mound could have been built for an important person who died during the famine, but again, it's impossible to tell.

This is Sariwon, the capital of North Hwanghae Province. From space, at least, the city looks nicely maintained, has a well laid out street plan and would be a nice place to live. It has a population of over 300,000. The park located slightly off center-left contains a very large statue of Kim Il-sung.

Finally, we have a vast vacation compound in the port city of Wonsan.

I have zoomed in on Kim Jong-il's villa.[3] The grounds contain a number of large homes (you can see two of them on the right side) which are for government officials and guests. The two largest homes both belonged to Kim Jong-il. When he died Kim Jong-un demolished a number of his father's homes but so far this one has remained intact and will likely be used for years to come.


Sources:
1. North Korea's Cult of Personality, Wikipedia
2. Traditional Korean burial mounds, NK Economy Watch
3. Kim Jong-il staying at villa, Daily NK


--Jacob Bogle, 3/2/2013
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Mapping Project Update 1

In 2005 Mike Ane started a file containing several hundred locations of interest and then in 2007 Curtis Melvin and his associates at www.NKeconWatch.com greatly expanded the file by mapping the economic, cultural and military sites of North Korea using Google Earth. Their work brought to light thousands of locations and their KMZ file has been downloaded well over 151,000 times. However, as I would look over the country, I would spot something they had missed, and then it dawned on me that no private citizen (to my knowledge) has ever gone through the whole of North Korea, literally square mile by square mile, and marked every single item of interest.

So, a few months ago, I decided to take on that challenge. The work of Curtis and another avid GE user ( "Planeman_") laid the foundation and their descriptions taught me a lot about what places look like. For example, what an anti-aircraft artillery site looks like from aerial imagery, what an electric sub-station looks like, monuments, train stations and so forth. Building on that knowledge and what I have learned through hundreds of hours of research, I have been able to mark thousands of new places without duplicating the findings of others. 

This has been and continues to be a tremendous undertaking, but I think it is very important to shed light on a country so few know anything about. Even since Google Maps began, there was always a black hole in their data - North Korea - and it wasn't until a few weeks ago that Google began filling in the blanks, largely thanks to the work of individuals submitting information. It is my hope that in time North Korea opens up as a country, but until that time comes, I consider it worthwhile to use technology to reach out from my computer to data gathered from space and pull North Korea (or at least what I find) out of the void and bring it to the world. 

North Korea is divided into 9 provinces, 2 special cities, and the capital district. There is also the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) which I count as its own geographic division. Each area has its own file which is then subdivided in categories: Military, Monuments and Domestic. Each category may have further sub-categories such as: Sub-stations, Irrigation control and Dams, AAA sites, Road & Rail Tunnels etc. I have been making use of the placemark icons and try to make them self-explanatory and use one icon for each different type of location to avoid confusion.  

The image below is a screenshot of all the places I've marked (excluding completed areas). Obviously, it looks like a mess and you're only seeing a handful of individual sites since they're all piled on top of each other, but I think it gives you some idea of what I've been doing and talking about for so long. 

(click for larger)

I have started files on almost every area and completed the DMZ, the Rason Special City and Ryanggang Province. It is my intention to publish the files once I am closer to completing the project, although I may publish what areas I've finished sooner. 

With completed divisions and the portions of partially completed divisions combined, I estimate that I am 25% finished and have marked roughly 2,200 items. The completed areas cover nearly 6,000 sq miles of territory out of NK's total land area of 46,541 sq miles. Due to the lower quality of some of the data there will be portions that have very few placemarks simply because the resolution is so low that specific individual items can't always be identified.

--Jacob Bogle, 2/24/13
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You can use the hashtag #AccessDPRK when discussing on social media.