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And yet, the dominant sensation in seeing the spidery new detail on the land is that it reminds us just how much we still can not see. For now, it’s hard to envision how the map will have much impact inside North Korea, because almost nobody there has access to the Web. The delight we get in a digital glimpse of the North Koreans’ land only underscores the span between their reality and ours. The map allows us to indulge our curiosity, but we are just as in the dark as ever about the mysterious realm inside the heads of Kim Jong Un and his mercurial men. Politically, North Korea remains as black as a satellite map at night.
Evan Osnos looks beyond the new Google Map of North Korea: http://nyr.kr/14qwchk
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For China, 2012 was a humbling year. When the history of China’s reform era is written, this moment may prove to be a pivot point, a time when the myths that China and the world had adopted about the politics and economics of the People’s Republic began to wash away, leaving blunt facts about what China’s idiosyncratic national system has and has not achieved. Here are some of the myths that collapsed this year: http://nyr.kr/Ty0Oqv
Illustration: A. J. Frackattack; Photograph: AFP/Getty.
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Uncle Pervy’s K-Pop Playlist
I have a piece in the magazine this week about K-pop—Korean pop music—which has taken over much of Asia in the course of the last fifteen years, and lately has reached our charts, with “Gangnam Style.” K-pop is largely video based—one of the things that’s interesting about the genre is how it has spread around the world largely without the help of radio—and a lot of this piece was reported on YouTube.
For more from John Seabrook on K-Pop, plus his complete video playlist: http://nyr.kr/Qs1Iok
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"…the new government has adopted more of the vocabulary of freedom than the spirit of it."
— Evan Osnos on censorship in Burma: an Orwellian flashback - http://nyr.kr/PZaOpk(Source: newyorker.com)
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"If there was a positive side to the dramatic outage, it was the reminder that darkness is a reality for more than three hundred million Indians, who have no access to electricity. It might also remind the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the need to reform the power sector and expand the supply of electricity to the millions who live in villages without much basic infrastructure. For we are told that long years ago, Singh himself had no access to electricity, and bent over his textbooks by the light of a candle."
— Basharat Peer on India without power, then and now: http://nyr.kr/MSfylO(Source: newyorker.com)
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Burma's Becoming: A Reading List→
In the magazine this week, I write about “The Burmese Spring” (available to subscribers), the startling and fragile turn toward a more open society in the country also known as Myanmar, which had proven to have one of the world’s most durable dictatorships.
The story of why Burma began to change turns out to be as much about China and the United States as it is about the strange chemistry of autocracy—and I’ll be blogging about it this week. First, some suggested reading from some who know it well.
Click-through for Evan Osnos’ reading suggestions: http://nyr.kr/ODk7yD
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Q.&A.: The Cybersecurity Bill, China, and Innovation→
Evan Osnos talks to Adam Segal, the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, about the Cybersecurity Act, & how the U.S. and China stack up on technology innovation: http://nyr.kr/MIfjpQ
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China’s actions on Syria must be understood as part of a growing sense in Beijing that its world view is under assault from the West.
Evan Osnos on why China will back Assad— until it won’t: http://nyr.kr/MwV3ra
