Wednesday, January 30, 2013

of North Korea


On Tuesday, Google unveiled a detailed map of North Korea, offering a rare glimpse inside the streets, landmarks and even the gulags located in the world's most isolated country.
From train stations to department stores, the Pyongyang zoo, and the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where the embalmed bodies of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il lay, the new map fills in the blanks in what has long been an empty space.
Most striking, it labels the notorious gulags, North Korea's secret labor camps, where more than 100,000 prisoners are reportedly held in inhumane conditions. The prisons, which appear large enough to be cities, are highlighted in shades of gray. The images aren't as crisp as ones you'll find when searching other parts of the world, but search for Camp 22 and the Hoeryong Gullag and you will be able to see the outline of the camp.
The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, where controversial nuclear tests have been carried out, also appears on the map -- though it offers few additional details.
Google relied on a community of volunteer "citizen cartographers" to virtually piece the country together, according to its company blog. The crowd-sourcing project, which began a few years ago, relied on users outside of North Korea to contribute to the map using the Google Map Maker software. They gathered information from existing analog

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