Cartographers of North Korea

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/HQEYB4QWCjM

https://youtu.be/d7m8hZ67Bz0

https://youtu.be/guZQNMEz9as

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.

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.

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

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.

This is a post from 2019

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

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

It's a blank blue page.

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