The #AccessDPRK 2021 map is now available! The Pro version offers over 64,600 places, while the Free version gives people access to a solid foundation re: North Korea's military, domestic, and cultural sites.
Pro: http://bit.ly/AccessDPRKPro
Free:http://bit.ly/AccessDPRKFree
I started mapping North Korea in late 2012, released the first completed map in 2017, and began to remap the whole country in 2018. I wanted to keep track of changes, fix any old mistakes I came across, and to look for things that may have been missed during the initial phases of the project.
The combined result of roughly 7,000 hours of work is this 2021 version. It contains over 61,000 places that are divided into three main categories: monuments, military, and domestic. Those are further broken down by province to give a more granular look at the country.
During the remapping process, I came across hundreds of places that had been mapped in 2017 but now no longer exist (mostly things like propaganda and town signs), so the true difference between the 2017 and 2021 versions comes to about an extra 8,500 places. Additionally, there were some categorization changes, new descriptions for hundreds of locations, and other changes.
This Google Earth map is the most comprehensive look at the country freely available to the public. With some variation, there are 38-40 individual item categories in the domestic and economic section (everything from mining locations to irrigation pumping stations to factories and museums, schools and border security), and there are around 20 item categories in the military section. This has air defense sites, military bases, storage facilities, radar sites, etc.
The monument's section is divided into Towers of Eternal Life and "others". Those include everything from murals to "On the Spot Guidance" memorials and everything else.
There is also a "nationwide" folder that is not divided into provinces but that holds all of the same type of place within single nationwide folders. The places in this section are: Historic Sites, DPRK Missile Bases, Prisons, Children's Traffic Parks, and Border Crossings (current and former).
A note on the process of making this. As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, this project has been created by myself. I have no staff and no regular financial backing other than my great Patreon supporters. I have used what public information I could find in a reasonable amount of time (I can't read everything that comes out about the country), as well as my own experience to build this database.
I drew from older databases, books, government reports, western media, official North Korea media, think tank papers, conversations with knowledgeable people, and even sites like Wikipedia to help create it.
It is based on open-source information and geared toward English language readers. The Free and Pro versions have different levels of sourcing, but I almost exclusively stuck to English websites if I felt a location needed a link for reference. That means lots of places don't have links and many others don't need one at all.
https://mynorthkorea.blogspot.com/2021/01/accessdprk-2021-map-free-version.html
