COMMENT Mapping North Korea: Google catches
up By Aidan Foster-Carter
Working as I do on Korea, mostly alone,
it's nice when now and then you're asked to appear
on radio or TV. Everyone enjoys the chance to
pontificate a bit, I dare say. As a freelancer,
it's better still when they pay, even a pittance.
Plus the exposure has to be good for business.
For all these reasons I'm grateful and try
to fit this in, even if it's at very short notice
- as it nearly always is: hot news, after all - or
the timing is awkward, I have
a writing deadline or whatever. Writing, I should
say, is my bread and butter: nice, steady,
regular, predictable.
Broadcasting by
contrast, at least for me, is far more
hit-and-miss. Weeks can go by and no one calls.
The neurotic freelancer starts to feel unloved and
forgotten. Then all of a sudden something happens
- almost always about North Korea, and rarely good
news. It's odd - and scandalous - how by contrast
Western media largely ignore South Korea, although
the South is by far more important, fascinating
and accessible. But that's another story, largely
untold.
Then bzzzzz, it's hornet time. The
phone rings non-stop; for a few manic hours,
everybody wants a piece of you. Like a rabbit in
headlights, I'm really bad at juggling all that.
My wife, if she's in, is brilliant at fending and
scheduling. With two more degrees than me and a
busy career of her own, she's a bit over-qualified
to be my PA - but kindly takes this in her stride.
- And then it all stops, as abruptly as it
began. The hornet swarm whizzes off to buzz around
some other place and different people. All is
tranquility once more, much to my relief.
Better say bees rather than hornets, for
this means honey. Work is work, and for a
freelancer that's good, period. So the last thing
you want to do is say no and turn it down, if
possible.
Obviously, when the media come
in swarms then it's a clear-cut major story; like
a rocket launch, or Kim Jong-il's death - when my
phone started ringing at 4am. I'm glad that isn't
every day, though in death as in life the Dear
Leader was good to me. Uncomfortable thought.
Otherwise, maybe on a quiet news day
generally, it's just the odd broadcaster who
calls. In that case, sometimes I'm puzzled by the
particular topic that has piqued media interest.
Quite often it comes out of left field: not
something I'd have expected, or even reckon is
important.
And then I wonder: Who decides
what gets to count as a big North Korea story? Why
this one but not that one? Where does all this
originate? And, why do they all copy each other?
Enough generalities. Case in point: the
Google maps story. Google and North Korea is about
as unlikely a pairing as could be imagined. But
with the first month of 2013 not over yet, this
implausible juxtaposition has already this year
hit the headlines not just once, but now twice.
The first time was understandable. I'm
still not sure quite why Google's executive
chairman Eric Schmidt chose to visit Pyongyang, in
the depths of the DPRK (Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, North Korea) winter. But the
very fact that he did is clearly and unambiguously
news. Why? Because he is by some way the most
important Western business figure ever to grace
the people's paradise with his presence.
Quite a few top politicians have made the
trip, but from the private sector the A-list is
short. CNN founder Ted Turner went in 2005, as did
Daniel Vasella, CEO of the Swiss drug giant
Novartis. The legendary Maurice "Hank" Greenberg,
formerly of AIG insurance fame (or notoriety) and
an old Asia hand par excellence, paid a low-key
visit in 2009. That's about it.
Which is
sad, yet unsurprising. Until and unless Kim
Jong-eun does a Myanmar and opens up, there is no
serious commerce to be had with North Korea. Why
would a billionaire mover and shaker waste his
valuable time there? So for Eric Schmidt - whose
personal net worth is US$7.5 billion, according to
Forbes; that's about one-third of North Korea's
annual GDP - to choose to spend four days there is
a news story, no question. (But still no real
answer.)
And now the Google-DPRK combo has
made headlines a second time. A radio station rang
me about this before 8am this morning. Luckily my
son, who works in consulting, had sent on to me an
e-mail from a friend of his on the same topic the
night before, so I was primed.
So what's
the story this time? Let the headlines tell it.
"Google adds detail to North Korea map" - The
Guardian. "Google expands North Korea map
coverage" - BBC News. "Google Fills In North Korea
Map, From Subways to Gulags" - The Wall St
Journal. I could go on, but you get the picture.
If you follow North Korea you surely have already
seen this by now.
But I repeat: What is
the story? From those headlines, you'd imagine the
news is that thanks to Google we can now fill in
what used to be blanks on the map. The DPRK is a
famously secretive state, often dubbed the "Hermit
Kingdom" after a late-19th century predecessor in
the dying decades of the Yi or Choson dynasty: the
Taewongun, regent from 1864-1873, who strove
mightily but in vain to keep Korea closed and all
the foreign devils at bay. Sound familiar?
Yet the Taewongun's best efforts couldn't
stop Korea becoming a plaything of great powers:
fought over by China and Russia, then conquered by
Japan. Nuclear weapons will save the Kim regime
from that fate. Meanwhile the DPRK does manage to
keep quite a lot hidden.
But maps, that's
another story - and by no means a new one. In this
age of prying satellites, nowadays we can all peek
over the DPRK's walls and get a bird's-eye view.
And we do. In fact we've been able to do this for
years, long before Google as such got in on the
action.
As anyone who follows North Korea
knows, the pioneer here is Curtis Melvin, online
begetter of the website NKEconwatch.
A vital resource on the DPRK generally, its
crowning glory is the mapping Curtis has been
doing for years now, mostly for love - he has
rarely had funding for this - assisted by anyone
else out there with data to add. (The trendy term
for this, I learn from Google which also practices
it, is "crowdsourcing".)
Recently Curtis
teamed up with 38North, another key DPRK resource
- disclosure: I write there sometimes - put out by
the US Korea Institute (USKI) in Washington DC, to
produce a digital atlas of North Korea. This
recently went live.
This too is a Google story, kind of. The
mighty G being ubiquitous, the main tool Curtis
uses is one of their apps: only not Google Maps,
but Google
Earth.
None of this is exactly news.
As Curtis notes on NKEconwatch:
"Since launching in April 2007, this
project has been downloaded over 250,000 times
and has been featured in numerous media outlets
including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Times of
London, Telegraph, Independent, Der Spiegel,
Choson Ilbo, NPR, Voice of America, Radio Free
Asia, Washington Post, BBC, Yonhap, China
People's Daily, China CCTV, Joong Ang Daily, and
the Rachel Maddow Show."
So to anyone
(reader or media outlet) who'd been paying
attention, all the oohing and aahing over Google
Maps - wow, Pyongyang streets! And oh, there are
the gulag camps - is nothing new. On the contrary,
in Yogi Berra's immortal phrase, it's just deja vu
all over again.
Are memories really so
short? To be fair, some of these latest reports
did also mention that NKEconwatch had got there
first. Evan Ramstad in the WSJ quoted Curtis
Melvin as saying he was "surprised to learn of the
separate work for Google Maps: 'It's not even a
fraction of what I've already published'". [1]
Graciously, Curtis then told the New York Times
that Google "provided the umph to get more eyes
focused on the issue. North Korea is a serious
policy, humanitarian and security challenge, and
the more information we have, the better." [2]
True, when Google does something it gets
attention, as we've just seen - twice over. They
insist, by the way, that Schmidt's visit - he
wasn't wearing his Google hat as such, although
Pyongyang with predictable mendacity called it a
Google delegation - had no connection with these
new maps of the DPRK, despite the timing. The maps
had been in the works for some years, and they
finally now had enough data to go public. Purely
coincidental. Yeah, right.
Maybe I should
be gracious like Curtis. Google is a mighty ally,
and a formidable foe. This helps me appreciate how
many South Koreans feel about the chaebol: mighty
conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai, which run
pretty much everything. Similarly, as the
Economist showed in a fine recent article, IT's
Big Four - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google -
are gradually taking over the planet while
fighting each other. There doesn't seem much that
we or anyone can do to keep
them in check.
Even so, it's a bit
rich for a behemoth like Google to pose as a
pioneer shedding new light, when in fact the
darkness and blanks on the map of North Korea were
only its own. Here, the big G is a follower not a
leader: A guy in DC got there first, and kudos to
him. Truth matters, so it's no less dismaying that
many media seemed content to act as Google's PR
department and just parrot what they were told,
without bothering to check out the story and its
context.
Finally, back to my broadcast.
Later in the day a different producer on the same
station (no names) came back to me, with a
different idea. For whatever reason they had lost
interest in the Google maps story. Instead, could
I please comment on the North Korean rocket
launch?
The what? You mean their threat of
a nuclear test, surely? They fired their big
rocket seven weeks ago. Ah - Might you possibly
mean today's satellite launch by, er, South Korea?
They did, and I did it. Gotta be versatile
in this game. North Korea, South Korea: all in a
day's work, all grist to the mill. But it does
help if you know which one is which.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research
fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds
University, and a freelance consultant, writer and
broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor
to the peninsula, he has followed North Korea for
over 40 years.
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