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Did you know that AP’s office in Pyongyang conducts workshops training local reporters to write to international journalism standards? Or that, in 2004, there was a medical exchange program that sent North Korean doctors to train in laparoscopic surgery at American universities?
The Engage DPRK mapping initiative, founded and led by Jiehae Blackman, is an elegant solution to a largely unmet need. It strives to visually map all operations between international actors – from major multilateral organizations to small NGOs to business entrepreneurs – in North Korea between 1995 and 2012.The interface is clean and comprehensible, providing filters as they appear on the map by field (development assistance, humanitarian relief, professional training, educational assistance, and business). Other tools allow you to view relative population densities, market locations, and even flood damaged areas. More useful still is an adjustable time dimension to view operations as they grow through the years (for example, click on “humanitarian relief” and watch the map get a bad case of chicken pox between 1996 & 1998).
Whatever the status of official engagement efforts, we are supportive of the type of below-the-radar work these various groups are doing. We are also indebted to people like Blackman who invest in this sort of knowledge work; the undertaking reminds us of other intrepidly curious researchers such as those at North Korea Economy Watch, North Korea Leadership Watch, and Sino NK, among others. For more background on this project, see WSJ’s Korea Realtime, but there is a lot to be learned from just using it.