Google Maps just added a bevy of data to North Korea.
What was once a large blank now depicts a landscape of borders, subways and cities in addition to the country's "gulag-like work camps, marked by brown shading," reports Hyperallergic. Those prisons are allegedly some of "the largest and most inhumane in the world," says The Journal, so the reviews are rather surprising, and illuminating, to say the least.
"After staying a week in the rather fantastic Buckchang Gulag, I had high expectations for the Hoeryong Gulag," said one cited by The Journal. "I figured Gulag was some sort of chain."
The big reveal is part of a crowdsourcing effort in which "citizen cartographers" contributed names of landmarks, streets and so forth as part of Google's Map Maker effort. It also comes three weeks after Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt visited the country, although a company spokesman denied any connection between his trips and the new maps, said The Journal.
[via Hyperallergic]
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