5/3/2005: Korea at night

[Undertoad]

Always fun are the "earth at night" images but whenever I see then, I always look at North and South Korea and how vastly different they appear. This is the first such image that I've seen that isolates the entire peninsula.

I had thought the north was just poor -- and they are, eating grass if they can to avoid starving -- but it turns out that this is also the result of a personality cult demanding that all lights be off and all people in the country asleep by curfew time. Because the entire country is a slave state.

Oh. That's much better.

Christpher Hitchens puts it together in this piece on North Korea, which is where the image link came from:

One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint. ("Hmmm … good book. Let's see if we can make it work.")

Actually, North Korea is rather worse than Orwell's dystopia. There would be no way, in the capital city of Pyongyang, to wander off and get lost in the slums, let alone to rent an off-the-record love nest in a room over a shop. Everybody in the city has to be at home and in bed by curfew time, when all the lights go off (if they haven't already failed). A recent nighttime photograph of the Korean peninsula from outer space shows something that no "free-world" propaganda could invent: a blaze of electric light all over the southern half, stopping exactly at the demilitarized zone and becoming an area of darkness in the north.

[glatt]

I don't doubt that North Korea has fewer lights than South Korea, but this image looks totally fake to me. North Korea is darker here than the ocean off the coast of North Korea.

[jinx]

N. Korea looks slightly brighter in this version, but really not much. They can't all be fake.

[glatt]

Good. In your picture you can see the lights of North Korean capital city.

[tw]

Originally Posted by glatt

I don't doubt that North Korea has fewer lights than South Korea, but this image looks totally fake to me. North Korea is darker here than the ocean off the coast of North Korea.

North Korea has a major electric shortage. These shortages are why Kim Jung Il could get his extremist party elders to go along with a treaty (negotiated by Carter) that would bring N Korea back into the world. But when the US Congress stopped oil shipments that were to be part of the 'opening' of N Korea, then the Kim Jung Il had no choice but to conceded to the extremists.

With no other choice and a government dominated by fearful extremists, then N Korea has a nuclear program. To the extremist factions in N Korea, their energy shortages are due to a world that only wants to conquer the Korean people. Kim Jung Il, who actually lived outside of N Korea, knows better. But with so little energy sources and with a US Congress that cut off those promised energy supplies, then any attempt to reform N Korean government attitudes is doomed. As a result, insufficient energy to light N Korea.

Providing N Korea with enough electricity to light their cities would easily empower Kim Jung Il to eliminate the militaristic extremists who dominate his government. But with a George Jr administration putting N Korea as the next invasion after Iran, then Kim Jung Il has no hope in reforming his country. Best to only light the captial city where those extremists hold power.

As for that nuclear reactor that everyone was so upset about? 5 Megawatts. Trivial for most countries. A major source of electricity for N Korea.

[Beestie]

No lights in China along the NK border?

[xant]

glatt, this is the second time I've seen an image like this. (And jinx's makes a third.) Nothing fake about it. I suspect the reason the ocean looks brighter is because water is far more reflective than land, so some moonlight and starlight will be captured.

[magilla]

Originally Posted by xant

glatt, this is the second time I've seen an image like this. (And jinx's makes a third.) Nothing fake about it. I suspect the reason the ocean looks brighter is because water is far more reflective than land, so some moonlight and starlight will be captured.

That and the presence of phosphorescent microorganisms.

Chris

[glatt]

Originally Posted by magilla

That and the presence of phosphorescent microorganisms.

Chris

That's an explanation I can buy.

[xant]

I had a feeling one of them was on the cellar. Take a look at this one:
http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=419.

It's not quite as clear here because Japan and S. Korea are so bright that they blend together. Just look west of Japan to S. Korea, then look directly north to see N. Korea.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by xant

I had a feeling one of them was on the cellar. Take a look at this one:
http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=419.

It's not quite as clear here because Japan and S. Korea are so bright that they blend together. Just look west of Japan to S. Korea, then look directly north to see N. Korea.

Cool. I don't remember that image from the Cellar. It was before my time. But even that image shows P'yongyang, even if it is a tiny dot in a sea of darkness. Today's image shows nothing. The vast empty ocean is brighter than the capital city. It just looks too fake to me. I'm not saying it is a fake. It just looks fake.

[Beestie]

Wow, tw, I had no idea that North Korea was so misunderstood.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Beestie

Wow, tw, I had no idea that North Korea was so misunderstood.

Posted was commonly known. So commonly known that Carter got the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the negotiations.

Did you hear what reporters are being told, off the record, by N Korean diplomats as they announced the shutdown and removal of those plutonium laced rods? They keep asking, "What will it take for the US government to negotiate with us in earnest?" The world understands these facts quite well. Unfortunately neighbors such as Japan figure the new US hardline position will not change. "If he is not a friend, then he can only be an enemy" concept. Japanese have been quietly gearing the world's second largest military (measured in dollars) for protection from a war in N Korea they fear to be inevitable.

Many don't know that Japan has a military that large. Many are so ill informed as to think Japan has a tiny if not no military. They would also have no idea of Kim Jung Il's ill-fated attempt to reform his nation.

Kim Jung Il is working within narrow constraints. The power brokers in his country cannot be ignored. But they also have little idea (as Kim does) of how the world really works. Kim Jung Il is in the same position as Assad of Syria. Both have narrow constraints that keep them in power. Both came to power with the intent of reforming their countries. Both are learning what they can and cannot do - and why their fathers were so ruthless.

[glatt]

Anyway, back to the image. There is a diagonal line that appears between two areas of differing levels of brightness. This is an "artifact" of the camera or the image processing and does not show lights that exist on the ground. If this type of artifact exists in the image, there could be others that make the North seem darker than it really is. (See my diagonal yellow line below, and compare it to the original image.)

I'm not saying North Korea has as many lights as the South. I know it's a backwards-ass country with little electricity. I just think the image looks fake. It looks more fake compared to the other two images posted, which do show the capital city.

There is a hint of light on the coast near the south by the arrow I drew.

[glatt]

Here's an image of North Korea at night that does not appear fake to me (top one.) It shows a few city lights, it shows a brightly lit DMZ, it shows lights in surrounding countries that appear to be dark in today's IOD above. This is was I expected North Korea to look like.

OK, I'll stop ranting and raving now.