That vast swath of darkness at the center of the above image, looking like a speckled, oddly shaped body of water — that’s the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, photographed from the International Space Station on January 30th. NASA has some relevant landmarks labeled for context.
It’s a striking reminder of how literally and figuratively dark the country is: Pyongyang, North Korea, a city of 3.26 million, looks about the same size as Gunsan, South Korea, population 280,000. The rest of the DPRK might as well be an extension of the Yellow Sea.
