North Korea is one of the most secretive countries on the planet.
Ruled by its supreme leader Kim Jong-un since 2011, the hermit kingdom has very little contact with the rest of the world and not much is known about what life is like there.
And how North Korea appears on Google Maps is bizarre.
Normally users can zoom in on almost any street around the world to see what it is like and navigate the roads.
But North Korea is completely different.
Users who try to zoom in and view details of the country will find themselves unable to.
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Roads appear nameless and the many towns and villages dotted around are eerily blurred.
The only details of North Korea that can be seen on Google Maps are the names of cities and mountains.
The rest of the landscape is blurred from view and hidden from the gaze of the outside world.
Anyone who searches long enough will find plenty of places, people and animals blurred on Google Maps around the world.
The reason for this can vary from protecting privacy to hiding government or military locations from potential threats.
It is not known why North Korea is kept hidden on Google Maps, but a plausible explanation is the lack of access western companies such as Google have to the country.
North Korea and South Korea only agreed ‘in principle’ to end the state of war between the two in December, so Kim Jong-un may still be a way of letting western companies map his state.
North Korea may also be trying to limit how much its enemies understand about its military ability, by hiding the kinds of technology it has and the locations of its army.
Whatever the reason may be, Google Maps users are currently not able to use the website to see much of the country at all.
In fact, the precious little which is known about North Korea comes from stories shared by people who have fled .
Known as ‘defectors’, a number of North Korean citizens have snuck out of the country at great danger to seek a new life.
South Korea is one destination where North Korean citizens end up.
It is thought that more than 26,000 people have escaped North Korea and headed south since the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
Others leave for China but many of these end up being returned to North Korea.
The Korean Peninsula has been divided into North Korea and South Korea since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
A tense border which is known as the 38th parallel separates the two countries and still occasionally causes disputes.
Despite the hostile environment that exists, full scale conflict between the two countries appears unlikely.
South Korea has ambitions to one day reunite the Korean peninsula and even has a Ministry of Unification which is responsible for this goal.
