Cartographers of North Korea (2019)

Side comment: North Korea seems to be allowing tourists to take videos fairly freely now, and some of those videos are appearing on YouTube. While the tourists' movements still seem restricted, the videos offer glimpses into life in North Korea I haven't seen before. For example:https://youtu.be/HQEYB4QWCjMhttps://youtu.be/d7m8hZ67Bz0https://youtu.be/guZQNMEz9as reply: Tourism is open only for Russians. It's been closed for the world since COVID.My friends were there in 2017, and all photos and videos were looked at by a border officer before leaving back then. The border officer could ask you to delete a photo for any reason, including not putting a Kim in the center of the shot.With NK's population not having freedom of movement, and checkpoints between cities, it's safe to say getting a real picture of how North Koreans really live is hard.

Opened the link just because I've always been mystified by how detailed that region is, and it ended up being a fascinating read. One more reason why OSM is one of my personal 7 Wonders of the Internet. reply: What are the other six ones ? :)

Super interesting read; I especially found this letter from "P791" fascinating:> Hi, Wonyoung, I map North Korea to help North Koreans.I select areas that look like they might be good points to escape. In particular, the detailed mapping around Phungso-ri (풍서리) is almost entirely my work.I mostly map along the Tumen River, both on the North Korean and Chinese sides. It is important to map the fences, roads, and towns on the Chinese side. reply: Once in China, however, aren't escapees routinely exploited by organized crime?

This is super interesting, but I would vastly prefer a regular article with the relevant illustrations interspersed as static images.

I'm fascinated to read about the motivations of people who do some much great work in places like OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia where it's almost guaranteed that they will get zero recognition (and obviously no money). I wanted to quote what the number 1 contributor (with 75,583 contributions) to the North Korea map said about his motivations:"Hello Wonyoung,I live in Germany. I also do a lot of mapping here-partly with a GPS-device. I use OSM-maps in my navigation system (OSMand) when i travel.Mapping is just a private hobby for me. Like others doing Sodoku or Mandala i draw rivers and roads from a satellite image. It just gives a good feeling to relax and contribute at the same time.Sometimes when i hear the news i wonder if the mentioned places are already mapped and take a look into OSM. Somehow i got stuck in North Korea. There was a blank map. So i could draw big roads and rivers. Here in Germany you only can do details, like junction restrictions or housenumbers.North Korea is really an interesting country. The political situation beween North- and South-Korea ist also very fascinating and has a lot of similarities to former East- and West-Germany....

I love how the data is laid out. It's easy to read and shows real care. I expected to lose my current nav when I clicked on an individual response, so I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't.

> we sent a letter to all of the contributors; here are the responseslove this one:> Good afternoon. Please provide us a screenshot of these OSM map. Only know "Google Maps". Thank you.

Very interesting analysis. There are many documentaries, but this one from a German filmmaker is unique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBqeC8ihsO8

This is a post from 2019Edits of North Korea: https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries&country=North%...Current status: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/39.358/127.321

Maybe out of scope, but I find the site design here very calming for reading.

Lovely presentation of the data.I really liked reading the responses from the contributors, it was surprisingly interesting to read their personal motivations and stories.

Really good analysis and storytelling. I wonder what the distribution looks like for joke/troll contributions on OSM and what nations or places get vandalized the most?

Lovely presentation, but I’m not sure what they meant by the last note. It sounds interesting; it’s a shame they didn’t elaborate.

I wonder how things have evolved in the last decade as North Korea has tried to evolve quickly at least in Pyongyang and more people inside the country have access to tech than ever before.

Coincidentally, yesterday I just found this chestnut from "Half as Interesting" in 2019: https://youtu.be/L9Di-UVC-_4?si=kydtb0r5VETKJJOOSummary: in China, cartography is illegal without approval and a license. The maps that do exist are deliberately wrong. They are obfuscated by technical means, and therefore, by design, there are no accurate extant maps of China.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...For comparison: even South Korea! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

Now do Web Designers of North Korea with a better interface.