Is North Korea's Energy Grid Crumbling?

It's no mystery that most of the world views North Korea with a nearly insurmountable air of mistrust. Even the country's two clo...

It's no mystery that most of the world views North Korea with a nearly insurmountable air of mistrust. Even the country's two closest allies, Russia and China, tend to hold its leaders and their overly rash and antagonistic behavior in general contempt. The “secret state”, as it is often called, gets its name from just how cut off it is from the rest of the world. With the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, the once imaginary split between North and South Korea after the Korean War became permanent, driving a bitter wedge between the two countries. That split has never been clearer than now, as North Korea's energy grid seems to be disappearing into thin air.
What Light Pollution Can Tell Us About a Country’s Economic Health and Infrastructure

A country’s economic health can, at least in some part, be measured by how much electricity it uses. Several of the largest economies in the world are also the heaviest electricity users per capita. Per capita (and with their World Bank GDP ranking), the heftiest wattage hour per year users are:
Iceland (#114): 5837 wattage hours
Norway (#28): 2603 wattage hours
Canada (#10): 2185 wattage hours
United States (#1): 1843 wattage hours
Finland (#44): 1747 wattage hours
Kuwait (#58): 1723 wattage hours
Australia (#12): 1610 wattage hours
Qatar (#55): 1576 wattage hours
Denmark (#37): 1525 wattage hours

For those who are more visual, here’s what this looks like:



Note also that most of these countries are either in geographic regions that have extremely cold winters or extremely hot or humid summers, or both. This in itself has an impact on electricity usage. So, too, does the population size, as the calculation is a measurement of population size over wattage usage. However, there are many other countries located in geographically similar locations that are not nearly as high on the list, some with even larger populations than those listed.

China and India, for Example, are #2 and #4, respectively, on the World Bank’s list of countries by GDP. Yet India, with the world’s second largest population, is far down at #71 on the list with a per capita wattage usage of 152 watt-hours a year per person. China was higher up at #46, but still has a comparatively small 474 wattage hour a year per capita, despite having the world’s largest population.

Why the difference in electricity usage? For some, it has more to do with cultural perspectives on electricity usage. For most, it has everything to do with the strength of the economy, the size of the country’s middle class and, most importantly, the development level of that nation’s electrical infrastructure.
North Korea is Slowly Going Dark

North and South Korea are a perfect example of this. Here’s a light pollution map of South Korea, circa 2016:



The country’s major population centers are extremely dense. Even still, most of the country is awash in light pollution, with few land areas not covered by at least some light pollution.

Here’s what it looks like in North Korea:



That cutoff at the bottom? That’s the Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries along the 38th Parallel. For all intents and purposes, North Korea is dark. Too dark. Even its capital is far darker than many of South Korea’s smaller cities. Now look at the same map of North Korea, but for 2015 and 2014:

2015:

2014:

It’s not your imagination. Several areas in North Korea have gotten increasingly dark since 2014. And if you take a look at a 2010 light pollution map, made using a different satellite, the differences are all the more striking:



The satellite used for the 2010 map measured light a bit differently, so take it with a grain of salt in comparing to the 2016, 2015 and 2014 maps. However, it is painfully clear that, outside of Pyongyang, the DPRK's city centers are increasingly dark at night. This is particularly pronounced in Wonsan, Hamhung, and Cheongjin, cities with reportedly large populations. Wonsan’s population, for example, is reportedly over 330,000, while Hamhung, North Korea’s second largest city, is said to have a population over 750,000.

Here are their light pollution levels closer up in 2016:



Compare that to a closer view in 2014:



Needless to say, something is happening in North Korea. The country's electrical infrastructure is suffering, as evidenced by its slowly decreasing levels of light pollution.
A Tale of Two Koreas

In the past 50 years, the differences between the two countries have been a bit of an on-going experiment, and in many ways exists as a case study on the differing developmental outcomes produced for a newly democratic and capitalistic society, over those of a newly birthed communist dictatorship. The Korean peninsula as a whole perhaps serves as the best possible location for such a study. The two populations were once the same, having a shared history over the course of many centuries, primarily interrupted by the Japanese in the early 1900s.

Russia, China and the United States have treated the Korean peninsula as a proving ground for their own philosophies. And if the two Koreas are any example of which philosophy produces better outcomes, it’s hard to look at the vast differences between the two countries and point anywhere but South Korea, with its growing economy and burgeoning middle class, as anything but a true example of which economic and governmental philosophy is superior. South Korea’s current and ongoing issues with governmental corruption aside, the country’s development in the past 50 years has led it to become the 11th largest economy in the world.

That said, it’s hard to say what, exactly is even going on in North Korea most of the time. The country is notoriously secretive. It’s likely that even North Korea’s closest allies don’t know everything occurring within the country. If they do know -- that is, if they verifiably know that North Korea routinely keeps and tortures dissidents in horrendous prison camps and invests so little in infrastructure that it allows millions of its people to starve of on the streets -- then those countries should be held accountable for allowing such atrocities to occur.



'Paranoid' North Korea won't stop building nuclear weapons – US spy chief https://t.co/gu9cgC62uV— The Guardian (@guardian) October 26, 2016

What little information does leaks out of North Korea is generally bad news or anti-American inflammatory rhetoric. It’s often difficult to parse truth from the lies, given North Korea has a well-established propaganda machine. In their pride, the leadership is more apt to let the country further devolve into a woefully desperate state, rather than seek help even from China and Russia. Yet we can still learn a lot about the country and its current economic state from slowly decreasing levels of light pollution.

Whatever is happening in North Korea right now, it appears it's only getting worse.