4 must-sees on Google's new map of North Korea

Google Maps releases a crowdsourced view of the Hermit Kingdom that fills in what used to be a nation of white space

A satellite view of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, Pyongyang, North Korea.
(Image credit: Google Maps)

North Korea was long a big blank space on Google Maps. No roads were visible. No train lines. In fact, Pyongyang, the secretive communist nation's capital, was the only identified landmark. Google changed that on Tuesday, unveiling a detailed view of North Korea that points out spots as small as stores or subway stops, and as large as North Korea's gulags, some of which are the size of cities. Google says the pinpoint-specific maps were created through years of crowdsourcing. Volunteer "citizen cartographers" — working outside the Hermit Kingdom and using publicly available materials for the most part — contributed details to a system called Google Map Maker. What are some points of interest curious onlookers might like to view while safely sitting outside the country's unfriendly borders? Here are four:

1. Hwasong Gulag

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.