This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/world/asia/google-maps-new-target-secretive-north-korea.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 4 Version 5
Google Maps’ New Target: Secretive North Korea A New Target for Google Maps: The Streets of North Korea
(about 6 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea may be the world’s most shrouded country, but on Tuesday Google Maps lifted the veil just a little, uploading a detailed map of the country complete with street names in the capital. SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea may be the world’s most shrouded country, but on Tuesday Google Maps lifted the veil just a little, uploading a map of the police state complete with street names in the capital.
The new map, built with the help of what Google called “a community of citizen cartographers,” provides people who normally visit the site for driving directions with a peek at places they previously only read about, probably in articles about the North’s nuclear program. The map of Pyongyang, the capital, shows everything from landmarks — the tower that celebrates the country’s self-reliance doctrine of Juche and the main square where military parades are held — to hotels, schools and hospitals. The new map, built with the help of what Google called “a community of citizen cartographers,” provides people with a peek at places they previously may only have read about, probably in articles about the North’s nuclear program or its devastating food shortages. The map of Pyongyang, the capital, shows all sorts of landmarks — the tower that celebrates the country’s self-reliance doctrine of Juche and Kim Il-sung Square, where military parades are held — as well as hotels, schools and hospitals.
Users can zoom in for photos and even post comments. The map that was on the site until Tuesday was mostly blank. Users can zoom in and post comments and photos; the map also includes what the site suggests are four gulags, marked as gray splotches. The map is still empty in most areas of the country, but is much more detailed than the one that was on the site until Tuesday, which was mostly blank.
The posting of the map — and Google’s call for more mapping information on the North from netizens — focused new attention on the North at a time when the country is locked in a tense standoff with the United States and its allies over tightened sanctions and has promised to conduct a third nuclear test. In a sign of just how hermetic the country is, Google said North Korea was the last country in the world to get a relatively detailed map.
Google’s initiative came three weeks after its executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang in a highly publicized yet contentious trip organized by Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico. Mr. Schmidt, a proponent of Internet connectivity who likes to describe the Web as the enemy of despots, said he urged North Korean officials he met in Pyongyang to let more North Koreans use the Internet. While North Korea experts point out that other more sophisticated maps exist and that Google Earth provides a satellite image that includes major cities and sites, some suggest that the easily accessible Google Maps will probably draw more casual viewers.
The map is still not very detailed in much of the country, though it does include four enormous prison camps, highlighting them in gray shading. Google Maps is unlikely to provide important new information to policy makers and others who already have satellite maps from years of surveillance to depend on. But the crowdsourcing project provides a tool for Internet users anywhere in the world to help identify at least some features in the isolated country that the regime in Pyongyang doesn’t want the world to know. (The regime cherishes secrecy to such an extent that its propagandists liked to boast: “When our enemies try to peek into our republic, they only see a fog.”) Even Curtis Melvin, who has created what many consider the most definitive public online map (on a Johns Hopkins University site), said Google Maps had “provided the umph to get more eyes focused on the issue. North Korea is a serious policy, humanitarian and security challenge, and the more information we have, the better.”
At the moment, the map released Tuesday is far less detailed than North Korean maps available in South Korean bookstores, or on a digital atlas using Google Earth published on the Web site 38 North. The posting of the map — and Google’s call for still more mapping information on the North from users — focused new attention on the North at a time when the country is locked in a tense standoff with the United States and its allies over tightened sanctions and has promised a third nuclear test.
In recent years, Internet bloggers and activists have relied on Google Earth, and defectors from North Korea, to locate several places believed to be prison camps. In each of the gulags, international human rights groups have said, thousands of political prisoners have been forced into hard labor for crimes like criticizing the ruling Kim dynasty in Pyongyang. Google’s initiative also came three weeks after its executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang in a highly publicized yet controversial trip organized by Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico. Mr. Schmidt said he urged North Korean officials he met in Pyongyang to let more North Koreans use the Internet.
“So far, Google’s efforts are largely symbolic,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul. “It won’t be easy to make a Google map of North Korea of the kind you see of other countries.” Google said Tuesday that the posting of the map project was unrelated to Mr. Schmidt’s visit, which the company says was a personal trip.
The premise of the crowdsourcing tool called Google Map Maker — Internet users filling in information about their neighborhood to help update and perfect a map — is severely limited for North Korea. The country is cut off from the Internet, except for its tiny elite, and even that group’s access is controlled. On Tuesday, Mr. Schmidt said by e-mail that the new North Korea map “sheds a bit more light on what is happening in this remote country.”
Google can try to enlist the more than 24,000 North Korean defectors who live in South Korea, one of the world’s most wired countries. But most of them come from the north of the country and, given the tight control on people’s movements, their knowledge of other parts of North Korea before their defection is limited. There was no immediate North Korean reaction to Google’s announcement.
There was no immediate North Korean reaction to Google’s announcement on Tuesday. Citing privacy concerns, Google would not say how many contributors there were or who they were, but experts expect future postings to include those from the thousands who have fled North Korea in recent years.
Google said that although its map of North Korea is incomplete, it could be important to some South Koreans who originated from the North and who could now identify their old home villages. The “citizen cartographers” were able to contribute using Map Maker, a crowdsourcing tool in the style of Wikipedia that allows users to edit or add to Google Maps. The company said the North Korea contributions had been coming in for several years, but Google held back the changes until it had time to vet the information as best it could, given how closed the North is.
Google Maps is unlikely to provide new information to policy makers who already have satellite maps from years of surveillance, nor will it get much of a following in the North itself, where the secretive leaders allow Internet access to only a small portion of the elite, who are closely watched.
But the crowdsourcing project provides a tool for users anywhere to help identify at least some features that the government in Pyongyang does not want the world to know. (The government cherishes secrecy to such an extent that its propagandists liked to boast: “When our enemies try to peek into our republic, they only see a fog.”)
Already, critics of the North’s authoritarian government and the backward economic policies that keep its people starving were posting sardonic comments by clicking on the “review” link often reserved for rating mapped businesses, restaurants and tourist sites.
One reviewer wrote, regarding bronze statues in Pyongyang of Mr. Kim, the country’s founder, and his son: “Wow, the Korean people must really have loved it under Kim Il Sung, to think they raised this gigantic statue voluntarily on their spare time while they was gloriously lacking food and metal for basic agricultural equipment.”

Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco. Shreeya Sinha contributed reporting from New York.