Conversations 9: Amateur satellite intel with David Jorm

It’d be fair to say that most of us in western countries like Australia have a cartoon view of North Korea — over the top patriotic songs or clichéd images of military parades and speeches. But a growing group of amateur North Korea watchers is changing that.

David Jorm is one of them.

His day job is as a security response engineer for a well-known Linux vendor associated with headwear. But he also studies geography and mathematics at the University of Queensland, and he’s started using open or commercially available satellite imagery and other data to analyse what’s going on on North Korea.

This interview was recorded on 27 October 2013 in Melbourne, Australia.

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Episode Notes

1. Video of the North Korea National Anthem as played on North Korean TV.


2. Video of the Pyongyang Army-People Rally, March 2013.


3. Wikipedia’s entry on North Korea.


4. Wikipedia’s entry on the North Korean famine.


5. Landsat data.


6. Analysis of North Korea’s Camp 25 labour camp by North Korea Economy Watch.


7. Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22 at One Free Korea.


8. Satellite imagery combined with rumour, refugee reports etc to create a map layer at North Korea Economy Watch.


9. Online Spies Spot North Korea’s Underground Airfields at Wired.


10. 38 North analysis of progress on North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong rockets.


11. 38 North analysis of the Yongbyon plutonium reactor.

[Photo: Original photo of David Jorm courtesy of Fairfax Media. Digital manipulation by Stilgherrian, available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license (CC BY-ND).]

Corrupted Nerds coverage of Breakpoint and Ruxcon was made possible by Extra Special Supporters Adam Thomas, Justin Warren, Andrew Zammit, Sean Richmond, Cunning S7Unt, Peter Williams; Special Supporters Christopher Neal, Glen Roberts, Johan de Wit; and many others.

Conversations 9: Amateur satellite intel with David Jorm by Corrupted Nerds is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://corruptednerds.com/pod/c00009/.