Schmidt returns empty handed from Pyongyang. But Google helps dissidents
Seoul (AsiaNews) - The "private" visit to North Korea carried out by the executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt has ended without any great results. And the decision to visit the country continues to receive harsh criticism from the American right and dissidents who follow the regime. However, as pointed out by one of the leading experts on Korean affairs, "Google Earth" has helped researchers to find out where North's infamous gulags are located ".
The visit took place January 7 to 9. According to Joshua Stanton, a lawyer who deals with human rights in North Korea, "what Schmidt did or did not do will be forgotten in a few weeks. However it should be noted what Google did for the country." In his blog, Stanton uses the images of the Earth program to locate and report on the gulags, where about 250 thousand political prisoners and their families are held.
Through the program, he adds, "the exiles can identify the area of their imprisonment and so help to make a complete mapping of these camps, among the worst in the world. The largest of the camps, if you don't know what you're looking at, look like towns or villages, and I suspect they are designed that way to fit into the countryside".
According to AsiaNews sources in Korea, the visit "will be exploited by the government in Pyongyang to get publicity." In any case, the American delegation that visited Pyongyang is trying to defend itself: the former American diplomat Bill Richardson, who accompanied Eric Schmidt to North Korea said today from Beijing that he had asked to Pyongyang to implement a moratorium on nuclear and missile testing and commit instead to developing the use of the Internet in the country.
"We strongly encourage the North Korean government to implement a moratorium on ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests - Richardson said - and we invited him to develop the use of the Internet." Richardson, former New Mexico Governor and former U.S. ambassador to the UN, led the group in the "private visit". The two had said before the start of the journey that they intended to demand the release of Kenneth Pae Jun-ho, an American guide being held in the North's jails since last November.
Google has fought and continues to fight a great battle against censorship by the regimes around the world. Unlike other software giants like Yahoo! and AOL, in fact, the Mountain View company has chosen to confront even the Chinese government and denied access to users' personal data. For this reason, it has been subjected to heavy attacks from Beijing and has lost billions in contracts.
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