The 38 North DPRK Digital Atlas, built originally on Google Earth, contains the largest, most comprehensive geospatial dataset of North Korea to date, identifying general locations such cities, roads, bridges, and railways, as well as more specific data such as schools, hospitals, military facilities, factories, mines and more. This proprietary database has been collected and compiled by Curtis Melvin, a Senior Fellow at the US-Korea Institute at SAIS, over the past decade, and offered exclusively through USKI.
A small portion of the dataset was converted into a custom-built, interactive searchable Digital Atlas, published in 2013. A second generation version built in ArcGIS, integrating about 70 percent of the data, is set to launch later this month as a free online resource and research database.
However, some portion of the dataset will be withheld from the public site, especially the sensitive information such as radio and cell phone tower networks, electricity grids, key military facilities and other installations. This data, crucial for researchers on a broad range of political, economic, contingency planning and other topics, will be integrated into a protected tier of the Digital Atlas available only through subscriptions or special licensing agreements.
