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tkgally 12 hours ago [-]
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:
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.
bragr 1 hours ago [-]
>Tourism is open only for Russians. It's been closed for the world since COVID.
This is no longer true. They've opened up again in the last year and there's been a small flood of extreme travel of people going.
https://youtu.be/TUmEcL3Feo0
AlecSchueler 4 hours ago [-]
Was your friend asked to make deletions?
funofthegame 2 hours ago [-]
I went there pre-covid and yes they check your camera and tell you which ones to delete. They told me to delete some photos of soldiers. I had transferred photos to an external memory card so didn't matter.
But you're not going to get photos of what life is really like on one of these tours because they take you to places they want you to see.
tomaskafka 5 hours ago [-]
That is not “life in NK”, that is an influencer that has been allows to make propaganda video of parts of capital. Read the actual witness of NK people who managed to escape, it’s one of the worst hells on Earth.
There's also this classic travelog of two railway fans gaijin-smashing their way through a closed route, although it's nearly two decades old: https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/
kaladin-jasnah 12 hours ago [-]
Jaka Parker, from what I recall, was a diplomat in North Korea from Indonesia(?) which is why he was able to have greater access to Pyongyang (and beyond?). I don't think he's in North Korea anymore. Nonetheless, his videos are a great resource. And my guess is that tourism to NK in 2026 is from Russian citizens (and maybe Chinese citizens)?
mrheosuper 9 hours ago [-]
The first video gives me impression that many of them are ... staged. Sorry if i am incorrect.
tkgally 9 hours ago [-]
My impression is that the tourists are being guided along fixed routes in the limited areas of the country that are open to tourists. But there are long shots of towns and the countryside from trains and buses that can’t have been entirely staged. These are the glimpses of everyday life that I find fascinating.
12 hours ago [-]
HexPhantom 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wmchen 1 hours ago [-]
For folks who want to get in the weeds of mapping North Korea on OSM, there's some documentation on OSM wiki. [1]
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.
w4yai 14 hours ago [-]
What are the other six ones ? :)
lampiaio 13 hours ago [-]
All 7, ordered by launch date (going off the top of my head, feel free to correct):
snopes.com (1994)
gamefaqs.com (1995)
archive.org (1996)
wikipedia.org (2001)
tvtropes.org (2004)
openstreetmap.org (2004)
github.com (2008)
I really think they encapsulate the best of what I like about the internet. I've been formulating this list for quite some time. Limiting to just 7 keeps things interesting! For example, it's a pity steampowered.com had to be left out but I see it less as a "website" proper. I wonder (ha) how my list differs from everyone else's.
simonklitj 13 hours ago [-]
Interesting! I like most.
I might replace tvtropes with imdb, and while I’ve never used gamefaqs, I’m unsure what to put in its place.
Thanks for this thought exercise.
mcmoor 7 hours ago [-]
I feel like while IMDb seems like something that'll eventually exist sooner or later, TvTropes is not, thus it is the true marvel of the internet. If it's down, I don't see anyone recreating it (apart from some forks that's mostly archiving the old entries anyway).
tomaskafka 5 hours ago [-]
IMDb seems to be entirely dead. I would imagine communities of people discussing the amazing details of each movie and giving points of view I didn’t consider and tidbits I didn’t know, but instead it’s … a list of movies, directors and actors, wrapped in megabytes of ads.
I'm terrible at making these sort of lists, and I usually find them very debatable, but I'll be damned... I found myself nodding along with every last one of those.
HexPhantom 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cantrevealname 9 hours ago [-]
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 live not far away from the former border (Iron Curtain) - on the east side. I have old maps here from cold war time with missing, wrong and falsified data. We dont need wrong maps if we want to live together in peace. Finally militaries always do have their own much more detailed maps.
In North Korea i only use the OSM-aerial images (Bing, DigitalGlobe, etc). Of course i also watch documentaries about North Korea more interested now and i took a look into the Armistice Agreement-maps from 1953. OSM is a great Project. Like Wikipedia it creates free data from all countries, free for everyone!
Im sure one day the maps will also find their way into North Korea. But for now it will help everyone else who is interested in this area anyhow. One example: I found reports from ornithologists researching migrating bird-routes and North Korea is one stop for the birds.
As far as i can see North Korea is mostly mapped by people like me just travelling on the map with their fingers and contribute on interesting things. Nobody is really working systematic or regularly like professional mappers would do. I hope this text helps you. It would be great to get some feedback about the results of your studies. Best regards"
ByteAtATime 12 hours ago [-]
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.
Exoristos 12 hours ago [-]
Once in China, however, aren't escapees routinely exploited by organized crime?
motionlessveloc 9 hours ago [-]
They chose to cross anyway knowing the risks, and it's still preferable to death by firing squad.
"Beyond Utopia" is a harrowing documentary about a South Korean pastor who helps people escape NK, filmed on the trail side by by side with along some actual refugees. It illustrates how complex, dangerous and utterly corrupt the process of getting out is, and also mentions the role of local gangs: they detain refugees and then do a bidding war between the authorities and relatives to extract every penny.
layer8 13 hours ago [-]
This is super interesting, but I would vastly prefer a regular article with the relevant illustrations interspersed as static images.
pixelN 15 hours ago [-]
> we sent a letter to all of the contributors; here are the responses
love this one:
> Good afternoon. Please provide us a screenshot of these OSM map. Only know "Google Maps". Thank you.
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.
LumJerliu 14 hours ago [-]
Maybe out of scope, but I find the site design here very calming for reading.
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?
lucb1e 14 hours ago [-]
Contributor of ~10 years and I have yet to be the first person to notice vandalism, as in, that it's not already been/being tackled. I've been the first to notice various mistakes (big and small), or seen the impact when large parts of the map were messed up in some big attack, and there was one case where I wasn't sure if the person had intentionally broken something or if it was some weird misunderstanding, but they never came back so... not much action to take there. Now, I'm also just a regular contributor and not someone who looks for vandalism specifically; but from my point of view, the distribution of joke/troll contributions to real ones is close to zero (c.q. infinity). Dunno why, I guess most people simply mean well?
lukan 12 hours ago [-]
"Dunno why, I guess most people simply mean well?"
This, but also the bar to contribute is probably too high for the common bored idiot (I know it got way easier, but they apparently don't know). Most of that group likely don't even know at all what OSM is. "Another kind of google maps?"
InfiniteRand 4 hours ago [-]
You can see with Wikipedia how it is when the bar to contribute is lower
kawsper 13 hours ago [-]
I'm also not a big contributor, but I haven't noticed any vandalism in the places where I map (Copenhagen, Denmark and around the west midlands of UK), but I have stumbled upon the occasional edit war where someone will be removing features like their private pond and someone will be reverting their removal.
willmeyers 13 hours ago [-]
Interesting, thanks for the reply and your contributions. This makes me happy to hear!
Exoristos 12 hours ago [-]
People are basically good citizens, unless or until they aren't. Something like online vandalism tends to eventuate as a movement, even if a casual or arbitrary one.
kawsper 13 hours ago [-]
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.
voidUpdate 4 hours ago [-]
> "* Names have been anonymized for privacy"
I mean it's not exactly hard to go to openstreetmap, search up the place name and get a list of accounts that have edited/created the feature...
jurf 13 hours ago [-]
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.
ktallett 14 hours ago [-]
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.
msla 13 hours ago [-]
It's a blank blue page.
SoftTalker 10 hours ago [-]
I see the page but very tedious to read on mobile. Site developers should just keep it simple.
Exoristos 12 hours ago [-]
Enable JavaScript in your browser?
msla 10 hours ago [-]
It is enabled, but that's the extent to which I'm going to debug someone else's problems.
Summary: 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://youtu.be/HQEYB4QWCjM
https://youtu.be/d7m8hZ67Bz0
https://youtu.be/guZQNMEz9as
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.
This is no longer true. They've opened up again in the last year and there's been a small flood of extreme travel of people going. https://youtu.be/TUmEcL3Feo0
But you're not going to get photos of what life is really like on one of these tours because they take you to places they want you to see.
[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:North_Korea
snopes.com (1994)
gamefaqs.com (1995)
archive.org (1996)
wikipedia.org (2001)
tvtropes.org (2004)
openstreetmap.org (2004)
github.com (2008)
I really think they encapsulate the best of what I like about the internet. I've been formulating this list for quite some time. Limiting to just 7 keeps things interesting! For example, it's a pity steampowered.com had to be left out but I see it less as a "website" proper. I wonder (ha) how my list differs from everyone else's.
I might replace tvtropes with imdb, and while I’ve never used gamefaqs, I’m unsure what to put in its place.
Thanks for this thought exercise.
"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 live not far away from the former border (Iron Curtain) - on the east side. I have old maps here from cold war time with missing, wrong and falsified data. We dont need wrong maps if we want to live together in peace. Finally militaries always do have their own much more detailed maps.
In North Korea i only use the OSM-aerial images (Bing, DigitalGlobe, etc). Of course i also watch documentaries about North Korea more interested now and i took a look into the Armistice Agreement-maps from 1953. OSM is a great Project. Like Wikipedia it creates free data from all countries, free for everyone!
Im sure one day the maps will also find their way into North Korea. But for now it will help everyone else who is interested in this area anyhow. One example: I found reports from ornithologists researching migrating bird-routes and North Korea is one stop for the birds.
As far as i can see North Korea is mostly mapped by people like me just travelling on the map with their fingers and contribute on interesting things. Nobody is really working systematic or regularly like professional mappers would do. I hope this text helps you. It would be great to get some feedback about the results of your studies. Best regards"
> 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.
"Beyond Utopia" is a harrowing documentary about a South Korean pastor who helps people escape NK, filmed on the trail side by by side with along some actual refugees. It illustrates how complex, dangerous and utterly corrupt the process of getting out is, and also mentions the role of local gangs: they detain refugees and then do a bidding war between the authorities and relatives to extract every penny.
love this one:
> Good afternoon. Please provide us a screenshot of these OSM map. Only know "Google Maps". Thank you.
Edits of North Korea: https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries&country=North%...
Current status: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/39.358/127.321
This, but also the bar to contribute is probably too high for the common bored idiot (I know it got way easier, but they apparently don't know). Most of that group likely don't even know at all what OSM is. "Another kind of google maps?"
I really liked reading the responses from the contributors, it was surprisingly interesting to read their personal motivations and stories.
I mean it's not exactly hard to go to openstreetmap, search up the place name and get a list of accounts that have edited/created the feature...
Summary: 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...