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SEOUL
-- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch
last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim
Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station.
Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside.
That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George
Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on
his online map of North Korea.
Mr. Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have
spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the
world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports
and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures
and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that
stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an
annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite
palaces on white-sand beaches.
"It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin.
More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Unco ) [WALL STREET JOURNAL - Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil ]
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Try your hand here, at North Korean Economy Watch See if you can find Madeleine Albright or Jummy Carter hiding in an atomic pile.
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