When looking at a world map of night light North Korea is one of the darkest places on earth. Comparing South Korea’s night light to North Korea, gives you a better look on how dark North Korea is. To produce the night light images, NASA used Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometry Suite (VIIRS) satellite to collect wavelengths of the visible spectrum up to infrared wavelengths. Another way to put North Korea’s darkness into perspective, the Yellow Sea is brighter than North Korea due to glowing fishing vessels.

 

One of the conclusions that are drawn from the night light images of North Korea is that the country lacks electricity. North Korea started to lose electricity infrastructures due to the Soviet Union‘s collapse in the early 1990’s, because the Soviet Union was a source for cheap fuel. By 2009 North Korea was ranked in 71^st place worldwide ranking of national electricity production. North Korea blames their lack of electricity due to the U. S. sanctions.  One of the reasons North Korea lacks electricity at night is because to save money  they have a electricity curfew at night for the entire country. One may think that this means that if the country has an electricity curfew for the entire country, then you cannot draw conclusions about the country’s electricity infrastructure. But when you look at the images of North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, it shows that the city is using electricity at night and the rest of the country is not. One may conclude that Pyongyang has a better electrical infrastructure than the rest of the country. Even if North Korea had access to cheap fuel again, the electricity physical infrastructure has disappeared, due to people taking copper wire out of homes and buildings to sell during hard times like the famine of the 1990’s.

 

Night light imagery usually shows a countries population. The lights should show where people live. But when comparing North Korea’s population to the night light data it should show more light. Also like population if there is more lights the night light imagery can show more of economic development. North Korea’s imagery can indicate that the country doesn’t have a high level of economic development.