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Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil
WSJ ^ | 05/22/09 | EVAN RAMSTAD

Posted on 05/22/2009 10:19:26 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil

/snip

By EVAN RAMSTAD

SEOUL -- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station.

Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside. That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on his online map of North Korea.

Mr. Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches.

"It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin.

More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.

"Here is one of the most closed countries in the world and yet, through this effort on the Internet by a bunch of strangers, the country's visible secrets are being published," says Martyn Williams, a Tokyo-based technology journalist who recently sent Mr. Melvin the locations of about 30 North Korean lighthouses.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: communism; googleearth; nkorea; photos
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Here is one of the photo at the site mentioned above, www.nkeconwatch.com. It shows "Elite Area."

Near the top and slightly to the right, there is a square marking for pool and waterslide. Here is a blown-up version(the one inside the dotted circle is a waterslide):


1 posted on 05/22/2009 10:19:26 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; AmericanInTokyo; Steel Wolf; nuconvert; MizSterious; nw_arizona_granny; ...

Ping!


2 posted on 05/22/2009 10:19:59 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (LUV DIC -- L,U,V-shaped recession, Depression, Inflation, Collapse)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Ping!

Don’t Be like Joe Biden and give away intelligence sources......

“Ping” worked very hard to get this information...LOL


3 posted on 05/22/2009 10:24:55 PM PDT by jakerobins
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To: TigerLikesRooster

A glimpse of the New World Order.


4 posted on 05/22/2009 10:32:36 PM PDT by Bhoy (TEA PAllARTY ON!)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Communism is such a wonderful thing. Why don’t we try it here? Oh, wait, that’s what we’re doing.


5 posted on 05/22/2009 10:57:10 PM PDT by Rocky (OBAMA: Succeeding where bin Laden failed.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Interesting. If you enter the coordinates of Lil Kim's residence on Google Earth, you can get resolution to about 600 meters.Some of the best foreign resolution I have seen.

The pic you posted is about 3 mi (15,540 ft).

yitbos

6 posted on 05/22/2009 11:05:21 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: TigerLikesRooster
The waterslide thingy has been moved.
7 posted on 05/22/2009 11:25:56 PM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Rocky
Communism is such a wonderful thing. Why don’t we try it here? Oh, wait, that’s what we’re doing.


The Korean Peninsula at Night

The bright spot in the dark area is the subject of this thread.

8 posted on 05/22/2009 11:31:49 PM PDT by cynwoody
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To: cynwoody
"The waterslide thingy has been moved."

I think in cutting and pasting the WSJ pics, they got reversed, rotated or such. I noticed that too.

yitbos

9 posted on 05/22/2009 11:34:49 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: bruinbirdman
You are correct.

In both photos, if you face the water from the corrugated roof whatsit, the waterslide or whatever is to your right.

10 posted on 05/22/2009 11:38:18 PM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Rocky
"Communism is such a wonderful thing."

A look at what the Obammunist's future digs will look like, including the penal colonies he is setting up.

I hear he has extended Bush's ability to hold terrorists indefinitely without charges. He's talking about domestic terrorists whom his Homeland Security Commissar has identified in official communiques to local law inforcement as veterans, talk show hosts, pro-lifers, and right wingers.

yitbos

11 posted on 05/22/2009 11:41:01 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: cynwoody
Google Earth:

39 47 20.11N 125 45 44.34 E

This is NK Nuke Facility NK Nuke Facility">

yitbos

12 posted on 05/23/2009 12:28:34 AM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: TigerLikesRooster

They've spotted what they believe are mass graves created in the 1995-98 famine that killed an estimated two million people.

The contemptible Wikipedia entry on the famine, of course, blames it on "the collapse of the Soviet Union" and "flooding." It is remarkable how "flooding" and other natural disasters always seem to wipe out the food supplies of Communist countries but not capitalist ones. In Korea's case, those sneaky, crafty floods wiped out the North's food while, a few miles away, South Korea's food supply somehow escaped completely.

Always, Communist agriculture seems to suffer from one piece of just darn bad luck after another. Remarkable.

13 posted on 05/23/2009 12:29:07 AM PDT by denydenydeny ("I'm sure this goes against everything you've been taught, but right and wrong do exist"-Dr a)
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To: denydenydeny
A good reference on the subject is The Black Book of Communism.

It was written by a couple French authors who were very thorough in their study of all the major communist regimes and the death toll. It is dry reading, but is informative.

14 posted on 05/23/2009 1:02:56 AM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
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To: denydenydeny

I was under the impression that the “flooding” was the result of total deforestation as a result of every stick of wood being cut down and used for fuel.

Now if only someone could explain to me why it is that California’s fires of spring never seem to happen south of the border...


15 posted on 05/23/2009 1:10:14 AM PDT by sinanju
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To: TigerLikesRooster
I'm vaguely reminded of the poor taste and lack of class (not to mention P.R. tone deftness) displayed in the aerial views of the "Edwards compound".
16 posted on 05/23/2009 4:09:18 AM PDT by Red Dog #1
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To: TigerLikesRooster

book it


17 posted on 05/23/2009 4:14:28 AM PDT by don-o (My son, Ben - Marine Private First Class - 1/16/09 - Parris Island, SC)
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To: USNBandit

Was that supposed to contain links?


18 posted on 05/23/2009 5:52:05 AM PDT by ExGeeEye (Terrorists and wannabes should be killed upon identification. Period.)
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To: denydenydeny; All
Always, Communist agriculture seems to suffer from one piece of just darn bad luck after another. Remarkable.

Okay, here's a remark: suppose for a moment that what appears to be failure is actually success, but of an unarticulated program or agenda.

What might that unspoken ambition be?

For a hint as to the unhappy answer, see tagline.

Stalin knew what the program of socialist governance had to be - terror, more terror, and then yet more terror.

No one should be surprised at the brutality of these regimes; after all, such brutality is at least half of the joy of being part of the regime. The exclusive Party privileges are the lesser other half.

Life under socialism may be likened to life in an antfarm owned by a sadistic young sociopath. You might be fed, you might be starved; you might be poked to march around incessantly, or you might be burned alive. That depends fully upon the whims of your owner.

Pray for a Ceaucescu-style retirement party for Dear Leader!

19 posted on 05/23/2009 6:00:27 AM PDT by headsonpikes (Genocide is the highest sacrament of socialism.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster; Charles Henrickson; mikrofon
Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.


20 posted on 05/23/2009 8:56:02 AM PDT by martin_fierro (_oooo_( ° ¿ ° )_oooo_)
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