Google inadvertently reveals North Korean gulag

[best2002]

Google Earth presents a bird's eye view of many things that 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.

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.
Stanton's blog freekorea.us/ 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 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.
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.

(http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/korea-north-google-maps-idINDEE90900320130110)

[Nanjing to Seoul]

1. North Koreans are the most brutalized people on the planet

[HiPointDem]

2. Over six million people have been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo

in the deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

A study published by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in January 2008 said that 5.4 million people had died from 1998 to 2007 in Congo, with 45,000 more victims being added to the death toll every month.

With Congo’s war showing no signs of abating, this would put the death toll at 6.9 million today.

“Six million dead is a staggering figure that should jolt the international community into providing greater protection for Congo’s civilian population,” said Fr Pierre Cibambo, a Congolese priest who works at Caritas headquarters in the Vatican.

“The last ten years has been a human tragedy on a vast scale, and sadly one the international community has closed its eyes too,” he said.

http://www.caritas.org/activities/emergencies/SixMillionDeadInCongoWar.html

[MinneapolisMatt]

3. I think it's safe to say

that both countries are in shambles.

[HiPointDem]

4. NK has been in shambles since we bombed it flat during the korean war.

The Korean War finally ended in July 1953. Left in its wake were four million military and civilian casualties, including 33,600 American, 16,000 UN allied, 415,000 South Korean, and 520,000 North Korean dead. There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. Half of Korea's industry was destroyed and a third of all homes. The disruption of civilian life was almost complete.

http://ete.cet.edu/modules/korea/kwar.html

And most of the damage was in NK. The NK that exists today was almost entirely built since the Korean war.