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Google Earth puts North Korea Labour camps on the map
- rmc 14y agoMisleading title. Google did not mark the labour camps, a human rights activist made a map of the labour camps with Google Earth.
- darkarmani 14y agoThat's your quibble? The activist was able to mark them on the map, because google had hi-rez images of the camps on their maps.
- talkingquickly 14y agoGoogle doing so would imply them actively doing something politically sensitive which adds an interesting dimension to the story which the title implies is there but it looks like in fact isn't?
- revelation 14y agoI had the same quibble. This article even goes on to make the connection to Schmidts trip. The two subject matters have no single fiber connecting them.
- the_gipsy 14y ago"putting on the map" does not imply marking
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- elmofromok 14y agoActually, I think it does. It implied action taken by Google to find the data and add it to the map. Huge difference between Google decided to take these actions and add the data and Google built a tool that allows others to do the same.
- LatvjuAvs 14y agoWe have prisons where people work producing military equipment, and how much one needs to go to prison? How much law lobbying is done by prison owners?
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThis is simply not relevant and it reads a bit like a "tu quoque" argument from a North Korean apologist. It doesn't do them justice to call these "prison camps", they are gulags, they are concentration camps for political prisoners. Visiting them would be to revisit some of the worst horrors of the 20th century as seen in Nazi death camps or Stalinist gulags. The only reasons why these horrors haven't driven the west to action are that information about these camps are very difficult to get out and also there is very little we could do about the problem without causing millions of deaths (of South Koreans too) in the process.
- rrreese 14y agoI'm not familiar with American prison conditions but I suspect they aren't as bad as this: http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-north-korean-prison-camp-3549/ http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-nor...
- pygy_ 14y agoThey could hardly be worse. That doesn't make them good, though.
- mempko 14y agoCame here to say the same. USA has hundreds of thousands of prisoners toiling away in Georgia and other states. They are simply better fed slaves, but slaves the same. Probably makes it worse that they are mostly black.
- mempko 14y agoAlso, they have labor strikes, http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101209231616269 http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101209231616269
- samstave 14y agoJust had an interesting thought: what would be the legal implications should a private party mount a recon drone effort against North Korea? Assume there was some way to launch small-ish drones from international waters and fly them to such stated labor camps to take pictures/do whatever which did not include any weapons? What if this effort was a decentralized grass roots activism effort? Assume DPRK was to simply attempt to shoot down said drones, what other recourse, aside from doing something like attacking South Korea or something, would they have. Finally what other international laws would be broken by this activity? Would the countries where the drone pilots/owners were from be either inclined or required to prosecute these activists? If so, under what laws?
- gwern 14y agoSouth Korean Christian groups have been launching weather balloons into North Korea for a long time, as has the SK military apparently (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28korea-balloons.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28korea-balloon...). NK doesn't like it one bit, but it still goes on. Not sure how much of a difference the balloons being powered drone would make.
- martythemaniak 14y agoI'm pretty sure the subtle legalities would be lost on the North Koreans, so they'll definitely shoot down the drone and probably torpedo the boat. They'll find out the nationalities of the activists and boat and raise a stink so high, you'll probably get in trouble with your own government who'll charge you with god knows what (some Light Treason?)
- ZeeDrones 14y agoDo it, everyone else is. ;-)
- rz2k 14y agoPossibly, the Logan Act[1] could be applied. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
- thoughtcriminal 14y ago
- motters 14y agoAre there any other similar prison camps elsewhere in the world, or is North Korea unique?
- jpatokal 14y agoNorth Korea is unique in the sheer brutality and scale of the system, but Myanmar/Burma has remote prison camps and the Russia's present-day version of the Gulag is no picnic either. Myanmar: http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1HRGQK1_Q http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID... Russia: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/inside-russias-prison-system/263806/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/ins...