The story behind the image where North Korea is black is both truth and exaggeration. While yes, a lot of it WAS dark, first noticed by NASA during the US space shuttle mission STS-42 in late January in 1992 , it was noticeable enough for NASA to have a satellite take a photo of it. The cause of the black out was due to the USSR dissolving on December 26th, 1991. 50-90% of North Korea was powered by Soviet Oil piped in from Siberia. The fall had the lines shut off for a while, leaving North Korea and China scrambling to deal with the issue. While there was still some light there, in the popular internet photo it is clearly doctored as the lights from surrounding countries fallow a complete outline of North Korea, leaving only Pyongyang and a few suburbs lit, they did it on purpose to make it not look doctored. This is easy stowed away as doctored because of the DMZ line between the Koreas. The DMZ is a 4 Kilometers wide, the line is the most heavily defended area on the planet, so naturally, there would be LOTS of light, and you can see the South Korean Line at about 4kilos from the outlined boarder (which was clearly computer added as the earth has no visible boarder lines, especially those being able to be seen at night) but does not show the North Korean line. We all know that any nation in north/south korea’s position would route all the necessary power straight to their side of the DMZ as to not be over taken by a lack of light. This is only common sense. Who ever doctored the photo probably took out a lot of the other residual light around North Korea and dimmed the light in the capital while also taking out the light completely from the DMZ, because that would clearly be the most lit up place other then the capital. Look at these pictures from a book published in 2002-03.

See this as well:

Also, much of the light around North Korea is greatly exaggerated to the point that light that is there, should not be there. Look at this: This island is very lit up, there is no way that the light from ships, even if you would have an ungodly amount of them, could compete with Seoul, South Korea. In fact, that “island” that would have to be there for that light, DOESN’T EXIST!

Stop believing propaganda.