북한의 지도 제작자
Cartographers
of North Korea
An analysis of the OpenStreetMap data in North Korea:
Who are the contributors? How and Why did they contribute to North Korea?
May 12th
Wonyoung So
Wonyoung So
The population of North Korea only has extremely limited internet access; while a select group of people can access the internet for research purposes, almost everybody else can only access a countrywide intranet called Kwangmyong.
For a country that is closed to the internet, however, the quality of OSM data in North Korea is extraordinary: 324,415 data points drawn by 889 contributors since 2007.
It is particularly interesting to note that there are a number of street-level points of interests (POIs), as POIs are regarded as information that only the local people can contribute.
Name
The house where the great leader Kim Il Sung lived from 1945 to 1949
Contributor
P860*
April 17, 2016
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Name
The graves of Mr. Kim Hyeong-jik and Mrs. Kang Ban-seok
Contributor
P860*
May 19, 2018
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Name
Kaesong Folk Inn
Contributor
P810*
December 02, 2013
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Name
Taesongsan Fun Fair
Contributor
P789*
July 20, 2007
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Name
Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site
Contributor
P810*
April 29, 2017
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Although it is hard to know about the contributors only by the OSM data, but the data shows some characteristics about them. First, the plot shows that the top 10 contributors drew 61 percent of the map, thus forming a power-law graph.
Distribution of Contributors by # of Contribution
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Contributed in Korean
# of Contribution
1
2
3
10
100
1,000
5,000
10,000
100,000
Second, 62% of the contributors labeled map objects in Korean, including the top five contributors.
Contributors' activity can also be estimated by means of OSM changesets, which are a history of each user’s past contributions. Using these changesets, one can see which regions other than North Korea contributors have also worked on.
Distribution of Contributors by # of Contribution
* Names have been anonymized for privacy
Contributed in Korean
# of Contribution
1
2
3
10
100
1,000
5,000
10,000
100,000
For instance, the top 20 contributors who used Korean to label map objects also contributed to the OSM dataset for China, Germany, India, the United States, and South Korea.
For the top five contributors, this list changes slightly: India, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and Japan.
To know more about their motivations and mapping strategies, we sent a letter to all of the contributors; here are the responses from 211 contributors.
First, although the contributors' motivation is mostly for fun and pure curiosity—such as searching for empty space in OSM—, they were motivated by diverse reasons; in particular, with the respect of advocating open mapping, they wanted North Koreans to use the map in the near future, such as for escaping their territory.
Contributors mostly use satellite imagery to contribute data to North Korea, as OpenStreetMap provides Microsoft Bing satellite images. However, some contributors have first-hand knowledge as they have been to Pyeongyang. Moreover, they often combine resources on the internet to contribute street-level information to the OSM.
Some contributors have been interested in North Korea because of similar national history (e.g., German citizens) or they have personal history (e.g., their father was deployed to the Korean War), thus they have followed the news about North Korea. They have some thought about the reunification of the Korean peninsula. To explore more, please toggle and click to see individual responses.
Although most cartographers of North Korea do not live in the country, they are motivated by issues there. Like data analysts and investigative journalists, they combine information obtained from different sources by a variety of methods to produce place-level knowledge remotely. However, because of the inherent limitations of remotely contributed data, it is questionable whether these strategies can be applied to other crowdsourced projects. We should also consider who ultimately benefits from the OSM process. As mapping is a combination of technical, political, and social capabilities and intentions and open data can be accessed not only by citizens but also by institutions, unexpected outcomes are frequently observed.
* Methodology
OpenStreetMap data is used for the research. The OSM data is under the Open Database License (ODbL) version 1.0 share-alike license. For aggregating the changeset data, I used the centroid point of each changeset boundary. All contributors' screen name is anonymized for protecting the individual privacy.
Total Contributors
889
Total Contributions
324,415
January 01, 2007
Date of Contribution
2007 Jul-2012 Sep
2012 Sep-2013 Feb
2013 Feb-2013 Sep
2013 Sep-2014 Mar
2014 Mar-2015 Jul
2015 Jul-2016 Nov
2016 Nov-2017 Aug
2017 Aug-2017 Nov
2017 Nov-2018 Jan
2018 Jan-
Cartographers of North Korea 북한의 지도 제작자
# of Contribution
