One of my favourite Soviet-era jokes goes something like this: Three Russians are in the gulag. The first one says, “What are you in for?” The second one replies, “I called Zbarsky a revolutionary.” “That’s funny,” the first one says. “I called Zbarsky a counter-revolutionary.” “That’s funny,” the third one says. “I am Zbarsky.” (I may have written a little something about it before, but that doesn’t […]

When journalist Barbara Demick wrote her book about the lives of North Koreans (Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea), she opened with a darkened map – the black mass that is North Korea at night, surrounded by the flickering lights of an Asia immersed in modern life. But last month, those lights went on. Google released a detailed map of the gulags in North