The OP's images are doctored, but regardless of those, I believe that there has been a real large increase in nighttime lights in the last few years, at least since North-Korea started getting paid by Russia for helping fight Ukraine. The large increase doesn't seem to be caused by increased night time activity, but rather by making illumination itself the goal. The new NK night time lights aren't from traffic/gaudy commercial light displays/street lights/random late sleepers/..., but rather from illuminating a bunch of normal buildings from dusk till dawn on the outside. Getting internationally humiliated by the dark night time photos must have hurt someone's feelings.

A June 2026 picture of the NK border town Sinuiji, taken from the Chinese side of the river:

My source of the photo: https://www.rfa.org/english/korea/2026/06/27/north-korea-solar-plant-boom/ The theory that NK is doing these illumination projects purely to appear brighter on photos is entirely my own. I see it as Potemkin villages in a modern jacket.

[–] calliope@retrolemmy.com 1 points 13 hours ago

I bet you’re right. Especially with how cheap it is to use LED lighting.

They literally already have Potemkin villages like Kijong-dong. What’s a bunch of lighting to look better on these silly “development” maps?

[–] Tolc@lemmy.world -4 points 12 hours ago

its crazy to see how propagandized some people are against a country that has done nothing wrong to them. We expect such people to bring change, while in reality they are loyal to establishment.

[–] purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 1 points 18 hours ago

I find it interesting that the DMZ is completely lit all the way across. I wonder if there any other examples of this happening (a contiguous line of light from one coast to the other.)

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 5 points 18 hours ago

Propaganda?

[–] Tolc@lemmy.world -2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

because thats the saturation point of light

[–] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, that explains why the light isn't brighter I guess, but why are there no differences in the shapes of the bright spots? Why aren't there dark spots in the left image that become bright spots in the right image? Has there really been zero urban development outside of NK in this region?

It would be a lot easier to see if we had the actual sources of the photos rather than a video using them.

[–] Tolc@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Who cares? they most probably focused only on NK and didnt bother to update rest

[–] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Who cares?

Well, you should for starters, since you're the one making a post about it. There are a LOT of different things those two images could represent, even IF we take them at full face-value as presented.

NK was bombed to Hell and back during the Korean War and many areas being bombarded into the ground tend to undergo blackout procedures to make it harder to hit important targets or civilian populations. Perhaps they've simply relaxed those procedures recently (even though, in most of their rhetoric, the war continues on) since it's been a few decades since the last carpet bombing run was attempted.

Maybe, as you suggest, there has been a massive increase in urbanization within the last ~10 years and everything that showed as pitch darkness before was sparsely populated or living in abject squalor and couldn't afford/weren't given access to the electricity needed to keep them on all night. But maybe now they do and everyone is happy all the time and it's not even like they live in a repressive state where elections technically happen, but there's only ever really one option

Or maybe, as another user pointed out, the required buildings have already been sitting there for some time and only recently been instructed to have the lights on 24/7 to give the illusion of progress because someone got a little embarrassed when the first image made the news and everyone made fun of NK for appearing to be one of the poorest nations on Earth.

And what about the very likely event that parts of the images are indeed altered in some way? Maybe it's something minor like just rotating them to line up properly, sure whatever. What if NK HAS improved some infrastructure but visible areas of SK and China have developed twice as much within the same time frame? Whatever work NK has accomplished would look pitiful in comparison if that were the case.

And why stop there? What if there's actually LESS overnight light than there was however many years ago. What if that original image wasn't photoshopped per say, but just happened to be taken on a night where the whole country experienced sweeping blackouts (minus Pyongyang because nothing bad can ever happen there)? Or the updated version was taken on the night of some big cultural festival and the entire country was celebrating together in those specks of light?

My point is there are, like I said, A LOT of different possibilities that one can draw from just showing a set of "Before/After pics" and YOU as the person presenting them should have at least some answer for the curious beyond "Who cares?" Not only does that make you look bad but it lowers the importance of whatever it is you're talking about and subsequently lowers the audience's willingness to engage, to care. Am I expecting you to provide down-to-the-millisecond records of when each was taken, the diameter of the camera lense, or some convoluted third unreasonable request? No, of course not. But I would expect you to be at least a little ~~knowledgeable~~ actually no, just CURIOUS enough to go and look for some info if asked. Even if it's just a 30 second Google search, that's still better than essentially telling the audience to go fuck ourselves