Free Geography Tools

Planning a dream vacation in the worker’s paradise, the Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea (aka North Korea)?  Don’t look for help from Google Maps – this is what you’ll see:

But the GPS File Depot has just put up a zip file containing Soviet Army topographic maps covering much of that mysterious nation. I call it mysterious because North Korea’s the only country in the world that hasn’t visited the Free Geography Tools website, and it’s a mystery as to why ;-). Here’s Pyongyang from those maps:

Maps are at 1:200K scale in GIF format, Gauss Kruger projection (Pulkovo 1942 datum), and mostly date from 1983-1984. Georeferencing data is included with the maps in the .map format used by OziExplorer; for those with GIS programs that can’t use this data, I’ve created .gfw worldfiles for all the maps, available here. If your GIS can’t handle GIF/gfw files, then open the file in any graphics editor, save it as a TIF, then change the file extension for that map’s worldfile from gfw to tfw.

The raster maps are accompanied by a PDF US Army manual on “Soviet Topographic Map Symbols”, to help decode the map; , the place names are in the Cyrillic alphabet, so decoding them may take some work if you don’t know Russian. Also included are some shapefiles with general geographic data (roads, rail, administrative, etc.), but the data isn’t as comprehensive or accurate as the topographic maps. GPS File Depot also links to a page at the North Korean Economic Watch Blog for a Google Earth file with many points of interest for North Korea:

agriculture projects, aviation facilities, communications, hospitals, hotels, energy infrastructure, financial services, leisure destinations, manufacturing facilities, markets, mines, religious locations, restaurants, schools, and transportation infrastructure.  In addition to locations of economic interest, this map also displays anti-aircraft locations, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Northern Line Limit Line (NLL), incarceration facilities, political monuments, political residencies, military bases, and nuclear facilities.