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              Google Earth Helps Put N. Korea Gulag System on Map

   by  Reuters

   Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's visit to North Korea this week
   has been met with sharp criticism and low expectations, but the global
   Internet search giant indirectly is helping to make history by
   revealing one of the reclusive country's darkest secrets, say human
   rights activists.
   [1]Google Earth, the company's popular satellite imagery product, might
   have been the last thing Schmidt would have wanted to showcase for his
   hosts, because it presents a bird's eye view of many things secretive
   North Korea wants to keep hidden.
   Human rights activists and bloggers have taken a Google program used
   mostly for recreation, education and marketing and applied it to map a
   vast system of dozens of prison camps that span North Korea, a country
   slightly smaller in area than Greece and home to 23 million people.

   As many as 250,000 political prisoners and their families toil on
   starvation rations in the mostly remote mountain camps, according to
   estimates by international human rights groups.

   Schmidt's trip to Pyongyang with former New Mexico Governor Bill
   Richardson has been criticized by the U.S. State Department as
   ill-timed - coming weeks after North Korea conducted a rocket launch in
   violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
   Rights activists are skeptical that celebrity visits to Pyongyang can
   produce meaningful results, but they are inclined to give Google credit
   for living up to its informal motto of "[2]Don't Be Evil" when it comes
   to how Google Earth sheds light on North Korea.
   "What Eric Schmidt does or does not do in Pyongyang will probably be
   forgotten in a few weeks," said Joshua Stanton, a Washington lawyer who
   devotes his spare time to blogging and activism on North Korea human
   rights.
   "The good that Google has done, however inadvertently, by helping
   people tell the truth about North Korea, will probably be reflected in
   the history of the country one day," he said.
   Google has characterized Schmidt's trip as "personal" travel, and
   Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment before leaving for
   Pyongyang. The company declined to comment on the use of Google Earth
   in monitoring North Korea.
   Richardson said last week he hoped to win the release of Kenneth Bae, a
   U.S. tour guide detained in the North since November.
   Hidden gulag no longer so hidden
   Stanton's blog, [3]One Free North Korea, carries satellite images from
   Google Earth and analysis of the features of six political prisoner
   camps - three of which he is credited with playing a role in confirming
   or identifying.
   The blogger identifies images of gates and guard houses, and in some
   cases coal mines and crude burial grounds - corroborated through the
   work of experts and interviews with defectors from North Korea who
   lived or worked in the camps.

   "The largest of the camps, if you don't know what you're looking at,
   look like towns or villages, and I suspect they are designed that way
   to fit into the countryside," said Stanton, whose readers trade tips on
   the camps and their landmarks.

   Stanton, who became interested in North Korea while serving in the U.S.
   military in South Korea at the height of a deadly late-1990s famine in
   the North, built on the pioneering work of the [4]Committee for Human
   Rights in North Korea, a U.S. non-governmental organization which
   unveiled the camps in a 2003 book, "[5]The Hidden Gulag."
   When a second edition of "The Hidden Gulag" came out in 2012, Google
   Earth received prominent acknowledgement.

   "The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now
   available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify
   their former barracks and houses, their former execution grounds, and
   other landmarks in the camps," said the study.

   "Hidden Gulag" also credited Stanton and a second blogger, Curtis
   Melvin, whose blog [6]North Korea Economy Watch, has been at the
   forefront of using Google Earth to catalog not only prison camps but
   also ordinary facilities like schools, factories and train stations.
   "It opens up areas of North Korea that no foreigners are allowed to see
   at all," said Melvin, who downloads the free program available to the
   general public.

   Imagery makes denials implausible

   Melvin, an economist with an unfinished doctoral dissertation on North
   Korea's monetary system, verifies landmarks he finds on Google Earth by
   studying maps and documents and by sitting down in front of his
   computer in Virginia with North Koreans.

   "I've also been watching North Korean television literally every day
   for about three years, so I have a list of thousands of names [of
   places] I can ask them specific questions about," he said of his
   interviews with defectors from North Korea.

   North Korean defector Kim Sung Min, who escaped the country in 1997 by
   jumping off a train that was taking him to be executed, "told me the
   name of the train station where he jumped, and I pulled it up
   immediately and we were able to trace his actual escape path out of
   North Korea," said Melvin.

   Some of Google Earth's satellite imagery comes from[7] DigitalGlobe, a
   20-year-old Colorado firm that, under its previous name, EarthWatch
   Incorporated, was the first outfit to get a U.S. government license to
   gather and sell satellite imagery commercially.

   The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea receives imagery and
   analysis pro bono in a project with DigitalGlobe Inc, which has a
   record of supporting humanitarian causes, said Greg Scarlatoiu,
   executive director of the committee.

   According to satellite technicians, the imagery available directly from
   DigitalGlobe is of finer resolution and is updated more frequently than
   the versions carried for free on Google Earth.
   "Satellite imagery readily available through Google Earth has certainly
   enabled human rights experts to decisively confirm that these
   facilities do exist, despite the fact that the North Korean regime
   denies their existence," Scarlatoiu said.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [8]http://www.voanews.com/content/google-earth-north-korea-gulag-prison
   -camps/1581502.html

References

   1. http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
   2. http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html
   3. http://freekorea.us/
   4. http://www.hrnk.org/
   5. http://www.davidrhawk.com/HiddenGulag.pdf
   6. http://www.nkeconwatch.com/
   7. http://www.digitalglobe.com/
   8. http://www.voanews.com/content/google-earth-north-korea-gulag-prison-camps/1581502.html