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May 21, 2009

OFK’s 15 Minutes: We’re in the Wall Street Journal Today

This blog is mentioned in a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal about Google Earth and North Korea. Curtis Melvin, who has done vastly more study of North Korea on Google Earth, deservedly gets the most ink, but it’s nice to see this humble blog get mentioned: Joshua Stanton, an attorney in Washington who once served in the U.S. military in South Korea, used Google Earth to look for one of the country’s notorious prisons. In early 2007, he...
Categories Blogs & Blogging/Google Earth
January 21, 2009

39.91 N, 127.55 E: Hamhung, Haunted City

In 1997, Washington Post correspondent Keith Richburg was allowed into the city of Hamhung, just inland from North Korea’s east coast, to try to find the truth behind fragmentary rumors of a famine inside the world’s most isolated country. Although Hamhung is North Korea’s second-largest city and a key industrial center, it was an isolated place with few foreign visitors, little commerce with the outside world, and at a great distance from any international border. This is what Hamhung looks...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth
November 29, 2008

The Propaganda Signs of North Korea

One of the great ironies of North Korea is that  while it is, without much  question, the  world’s most closed society, one can literally read it from the distance of geosynchronous orbit.  I’ve created a new page on North Korea’s propaganda signs.  A big hat tip here to Curtis Melvin of NK Econ Watch, who found most of these and put them into their own subdirectory on this in his incredible “North Korea uncovered.”
Categories Google Earth
May 31, 2008

North Korea Tests Another Missile in the Yellow Sea

At about the same time it was given out that Napoleon had arranged to sell the pile of timber to Mr. Pilkington; he was also going to enter into a regular agreement for the exchange of certain products between Animal Farm and Foxwood. The relations between Napoleon and Pilkington, though they were only conducted through Whymper, were now almost friendly. The animals distrusted Pilkington, as a human being, but greatly preferred him to Frederick, whom they both feared and hated....
Categories Google Earth/NK Military
April 16, 2008

A Google Earth Mystery: Kim Jong Il’s Big Dig

Yesterday, while MiG-spotting over  North Korea at an altitude of  about 20 miles, the highest altitude at which it’s easy to spot airfields, I saw something that caught my eye and went down for a closer look.  I’ve overflown that area multiple times previously and ever noticed it.  At first glance, it looks like a runway going through a mountain.  And that was my first guess.  (Click images for full size and coordinates.)   Move in closer, and you can...
Categories Google Earth
April 14, 2008

A Wing and a Prayer: Google-Earthing Pyongyang’s Airport

The Google Earth gods have bestowed more blessings on us in the form of more high- and medium-resolution images of North Korea.  One place I’ve wanted to see in hi-res is Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, and I’m happy to report that that’s now possible.  Even with low resolution, it was possible to see the curious two-runway layout of the airport.  That is probably in part because Sunan is a dual-use airfield, one that hosts military and civilian craft.  (Click images for...
Categories Google Earth
January 19, 2008

Gridlock and infighting stalk collapse of Agreed Framework 2.0

You could  write the epitaph for the President Bush’s North Korea policies in six words:  There are worse things than gridlock.  Now that Agreed Framework 2.0 has reached its failure point  and not even  sympathetic media  can still deny it, the New York Times reports that the same  old factions have formed up  to battle about the fruitlessness of dealing with Kim Jong Il.  With North Korea sending signals that it may be trying to wait out Mr. Bush’s time...
Categories Google Earth
June 6, 2007

Army Life in North Korea

My favorite e-mails are the ones I get from readers, and  among  even these, the best are those that send links or new information I hadn’t seen before.  One reader today sent  this Google Earth image (click to enlarge; coordinates along the bottom of the image):   He wondered whether the label on the placemark was accurate.  I opined that it  probably was not, because of the absence of a fence line or guard posts, the location just east of...
Categories Google Earth/NK Military
May 7, 2007

Soju for You = Hennessey for You-Know-Who

[Update:   I’ve made indirect contact with a North Korean defector familiar with how Pyongyang Soju is made.  Based on that information, the product is not manufactured in a forced labor camp.  I  hope to  have more specific information about the materials and labor practices later.]   The Chicago Tribune and the  Hankook Ilbo are both reporting that North Korea is about to export of shipment of soju to the United States. US-North Korean trade is rare as Washington imposes...
Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Law/Uncategorized
April 29, 2007

The North Korean Air Force by Google Earth

[You can see imagery of North Korea’s nuclear sites here, imagery of North Korea’s prison camps here, and more Google Earth imagery of North Korea here.] North Korea’s airfields are some of the most interesting  places to spy on, and often, some of the easiest to spot.  Generally, you can see a large airfield from about 10 miles up, with or without high resolution coverage. Here’s an overview of the North Korean military airfields that can be seen on Google Earth. There is almost...
Categories Google Earth/NK Military
April 13, 2007

Agony and Ecstasy in Wonsan

When I put up my post on Kim Jong Il’s palace northeast of Pyongyang, Curtis Melvin  commented and pasted  in a link to this Daily NK article, a guide to Kim Jong Il’s various palaces and residences.  (If you haven’t seen it yet, by the way, we’ve revealed an interesting answer to our pyramid mystery.) One passage in the article sounded like something I’d seen: Wonsan Chalet Where Kim Jong Il and his relatives hunt guillemots or ful seals, enjoy...
Categories Google Earth/Japan & Korea/Kim Jong Il/NK Military
April 10, 2007

North Korea by Google Earth: Kim Jong Il’s Largest Palace

[Updated; The Mystery of the Tangun Tomb] Remember my March 28th post,  a stream of consciousness  that washed against  the subject of EU sanctions against North Korea?   Among the items sanctioned were  pure-bred horses, which are the kind not even  North Koreans would dare eat — because of who owns them.   That led me  to the one location in North Korea where I suspected that such horses might be kept.  I had recently found that location on Google Earth  while...
Categories Google Earth/History/Kim Jong Il
March 9, 2007

Peace in Our Time! Financial Edition

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Thursday that Pyongyang’s decision to halt nuclear facilities, as outlined in initial steps included in the Feb. 13 six-way agreement, will depend on the U.S. lifting of financial sanctions against North Korea.  [Kyodo News; ht Richardson] The U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, Chris Hill, once said that “[l]ife is too short to overreact to every statement coming out of Pyongyang.”  It’s true that the North Koreans do more than their...
Categories "United" Nations/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Google Earth/Money Laundering/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
February 18, 2007

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...
Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
February 14, 2007

Japanese TV Interviews Two of the North Korean Border Guards Who Deserted at Hoeryong

A remarkable new report, with video, strongly corroborates recent reports that 20  North Korean border guards defected, en masse, and fled into China.  On the 12th, Japan’s Asahi TV interviewed two North Korean border guards who successfully defected from North Korea to a neighboring village in China. On the 4th, the DailyNK reported that 1 platoon of border guards from the district of Hoiryeong had defected to China, and that secret agents had been sent to China in search of...
Categories Google Earth/Inside NK/NK Military
February 12, 2007

N. Korea Still Hasn’t Caught Border Guards Who Deserted

You will recall that 20 of them dropped their weapons,  deserted,  and crossed over to China.  It looks like they’ve been successful in evading capture so far: A North Korean source from the district of Onsung said on the 8th “20 or so people who looked like secret agents formed a group at Sambong Customs. These people and a soldier which looked like their captain had received orders and were preparing to cross over to China. He said “It seems...
Categories China & Korea/Google Earth/NK Military