
Google Publishes Detailed Map of North Korea - hoag
http://mashable.com/2013/01/29/google-map-north-korea/
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ch0wn
Blog spam. I don't see how Mashable added any value to the original
announcement by Google: [http://google-latlong.blogspot.ca/2013/01/publishing-
more-de...](http://google-latlong.blogspot.ca/2013/01/publishing-more-
detailed-maps-of-north.html)

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benologist
Mashable adds value to their rewording of Google's blog post in the following
ways:

\- link company and product names to search engine spam pages

\- giant image at the top to monetize 'below the fold'

\- tagged with more search engine spam pages

Please don't be ungrateful.

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ZeroGravitas
Hard to judge these things by eye, particularly if not a local, but it doesn't
look as detailed as OpenStreetMap's (which is also crowd-sourced):

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.0174&lon=125.7408&#...</a>

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astine
OSM doesn't have a satellite view. The first thing I noticed by looking at
Google's satellite images was just how mountainous North Korea actually is.
The country appears to be mostly mountains to me.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
You're right that OSM doesn't have satellite imagery (though various partners
that use their vector data such as Bing, Mapbox, Mapquest do), but it does
have mountains, illustrated a bit more clearly than on a satellite image imho.
I'm not sure it's that mountainous compared with some of its neighbours:

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.03&lon=126.558&...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.03&lon=126.558&zoom=9&layers=C)

The data is sourced from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission:

<http://srtm.usgs.gov/mission/maptheworld.php>

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TheAnimus
The ariel imagery still isn't as good as Bing, but the new road layouts are
much better. However they don't appear to have the river traces which Bing
has.

It's interesting because after reading Escape from Camp 14 last year I looked
in to visiting the DPRK, considering the moral rammifcations of directly
giving cash to the country via one of the approved tourist agencies.

Luckily before I had to decide if it was OK, I found the rules about being a
tourist.

No Smartphone. No Radio devices of any kind (no GPS!). No Computers. No
digital storage above 4GB. No digital camera with "powerful" lens (they never
did clarify).

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babayetu
I went there in April 2012. Computers are OK, and while the border guards
check your luggage and take your phone (you'll get it back when leaving) they
are incompetent; I brought an iPad and a camera with GPS. The camera even said
"GPS" on it, and the guard noticed. But I acted confused and he let me have it
back.

You're right about not wanting to support the government there, but the
tourism industry is quite insignificant and not a major source of income for
the regime. Do consider the moral implications of being used for internal
propaganda, though. You'll be photographed wherever you go, and smiling is not
really optional.

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TheAnimus
Don't suppose you've got a blog or anything about your encounters?

Would be interested to hear the account of someone who's a geek enough to hang
round here.

~~~
babayetu
I do, it covers half of my visit. It's in Danish, but Google Translate might
be your friend :) <http://destinationkorea.wordpress.com/>

I went with a so-called "Friendship Delegation" to celebrate the birthday of
Kim Il-Sung. Quite an unusual experience.

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mattparlane
Wow, they've even labelled gulags:

<http://goo.gl/maps/6IiCp>

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milliams
And they've actually been _mapped_ by OSM:
[http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...</a>

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kentwistle
Finally! I have been waiting ages for this functionality. Every time I browsed
to North Korea it was just a blank gray collection of pixels.

Next step street view!

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pwenzel
Has anyone noticed all the blue roofs in satellite maps of North Korea and
China? A quick search hinted that all industrial buildings are painted blue,
much in the way construction vehicles are yellow.

At first glance, it looks like a mapping detail injected by Google Maps.
Anyone have more information on these blue rooftops?

Example (Sinuiju, North Korea):
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Korea&hl=en&ll=...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Korea&hl=en&ll=40.086855,124.378796&spn=0.011574,0.022724&sll=44.913398,-93.220024&sspn=0.085704,0.181789&oq=north+korea&t=h&hnear=North+Korea&z=16)

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bane
I find it curious that so many roads/streets in Pyongyang have names, it's a
relatively new thing that's still hardly universal in Seoul.

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mikegirouard
I remember the Brownstone residence I stayed at was on a block which had some
street names. I found that unusual, especially since nobody knows the names of
the streets anyway.

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berendhh
Wait a minute, mapmaker is available in North Korea? Last time I checked, it
was not available in Europe. Strange priorities ...

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btn
It's available in over 200 countries now:
<https://support.google.com/mapmaker/answer/155415>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Though they're generally the smaller, less developed nations that they don't
have existing data for, so although the have "France" listed it actually seems
to only let you edit French Guiana.

I assume Google would like to have ownership of the data themselves, but
that's not really possible in more developed nations at the moment so they're
starting small.

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darxius
Has NK said anything about this? I thought it was considered a bad idea to do
so (retaliation of some sort).

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joezydeco
I'm kind of curious about the timing of it all. The satellite views and now
these maps didn't pop online until just after Schmidt's visit.

You have to wonder if there were some real non-tourist motives to the meeting
that we'll never hear about first-hand.

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hdh3000
there are no people/ cars/ anything in most (all?) of the images doesn't
anyone else find it strange that its a ghost country?

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cpher
Why no Street View? I kid, I kid...

