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'Citizen Spies' Using Google Earth to Uncover Secrets of North Korea

by Warren Riddle on May 26, 2009 at 05:01 PM



During Kim Jong Il's reign as leader of North Korea, the nation has been shrouded in mystery, with the government only periodically breaking its silence in order to tout fantastical accomplishments of the ruler and his nation. The veil of secrecy is now slowly being lifted, though, thanks to surveillance work carried out by ordinary citizens using Google Earth and information gleaned from news releases and eyewitness accounts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University, has been spearheading the "citizen spy" movement. Melvin and his fellow not-so-clandestine agents, using "democratized intelligence," have created North Korea Uncovered, a file which details the locations of nuclear facilities, air fields and dams, as well as the nation's transportation and electrical grids (pictured above).

The gallery of images also includes what are believed to be mass graves from the nation's famine of the 1990s, as well as photos of Kim Jong Il's personal golf course. The work of these Google spies should help to further expose Il's propaganda machine, which has been known to trumpet the ruler's golf game while millions of North Koreans starve to death. Predictably, when asked by the WSJ, officials from North Korea's Hong Kong consulate and London embassy declined to comment. [From: The Wall Street Journal]

Tags: Google Earth, GoogleEarth, kim jong il, KimJongIl, North Korea, NorthKorea, spy, top

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