It's always fascinating to hear about the cultural structures within North Korea. The image in my head is one where 5% are comfortable party officials and 95% are starving labourers. Of course that's not true: there are intellectuals and scientists in the middle, like in any other society.
A related article was posted a few months ago regarding North Korean sci-fi. Also fascinating!
In around 2017 I had a scholarship at Wuhan University. During that time the university hosted a cultural fair for international students. What was most interesting to me (as someone from the UK) was that I met for the first time ever students from North Korea.
These students were smartly dressed (suited and booted), which in comparison to everyone else in casual clothes, made them stand out. They spoke excellent English and Chinese, they were polite and thoughtful. Each international group had to give a stage performance, to which the NK students performed a piece similar to Beijing Opera; it was without doubt the most well rehearsed, costumed and, vibrant performance of the lot.
It made me realise I had a very narrow perspective of NK.
NK is 60% urbanized, higher than many ex soviet bloc countries. My uncle goes there for business, and other global south countries as well. In his assessment, everyday NK living conditions better than most of global poor. Compared it to a clean tier3 PRC city from the 90s, pretty ordered, few cars, lots of bikes, few advertisement, clean. Sterile and boring but in his opinion, preferrable to filthy urban centres else where. Same with the rural hamlets he went to. Sucks during winter. He found it charming enough over all. Reality is NK still holding on to residual industrial prowess - it takes some competent state organization to build nukes - and that translates into other parts of civil structures. More countries can't do what NK does, than can. There was a survey where 1/5th of NK defectors in SK were willing to return north, citing nostalgia. Anecdotally that's more than my experience talking diasphora from ex soviet republics in Canada. Of course uncle wasn't there during periods of crisis where gov whent full Juche.
You might be interested in or have already read the Inspector O series by “Frank Church.” To the degree it is accurate (or not) it was fascinating to think of all the things that a mostly stable but alien-to-me society must contain. Cops, municipal workers of all sorts, and the parallel world of a Communist party.
Not surprisingly, popular ideas about life in North Korea are simplistic and exaggerated. I'll just make a few comments based on casual study while living in South Korea.
First, popular support for the regime is much greater than Westerners typically realize. My wild guess is that at least a third are true believers and much less than that would consider lifting a finger toward regime change. When characterizing North Korea, it is more accurate to call it a brutal society rather than a brutal regime.
Second, a large contributor to this situation is the demographic outcome of the civil war and population management afterwards. During the war, massive numbers of anti-communists were killed or migrated south, and massive numbers of pro-communists were killed or went north. On top of this segregation, the Northern regime established residence zones such that populations were relocated according to their perceived loyalty.
Third, due partly to the relocations, the northern part of the country has the population with the least love for the regime. They also have the greatest opportunity to escape, being close the China. It is often noted that North Korean refugees in China and South Korea have accents from this region. When these refugees tell interviewers that they would like to return home but can't, my interpretation is that they miss their hometowns, but fear punishment by the regime.
Comfortable life for officials meant that they could use stores with stuff from the west (to buy Levi's jeans, Marlboro cigarettes, or perhaps even a walkman - you can google Pewex to read about these stores). Many of them had also homes. Not as in villas, but as in plain homes that you see in american suburbs.
One of the country leaders in 1950s built himself a villa once, but he never got to live in it, because the rest of the leaders make it understandable to him that it will end badly. So he ended in one of the regular homes. (you can google Ochabówka - I've been inside, and again - it's like twice as big as a regular american home, nothing like a villa you would imagine).
You can also google how Gorbachev and other Soviet party leaders were living. It was better than common people but not much.
The main difference in quality of life was that the regular police couldn't just lock you up (secret police could though), and you wouldn't be beaten up by simply showing on a street during work hours, or doing some other crazy stuff like wearing colorful socks or long hair. I mean, no party official would dare to do it anyway, but regular police wouldn't stop them.
So on one hand - yeah, the societal divide was way lower. But it meant nobody was free and everybody was poor - as in no TVs, no meat, and even a toilet paper was a luxury. Nobody I know would want to get back to that.
This is really interesting. I always balk against people talking about inequality with this sort of thing in mind: the problem isn't inequality, it's how good the low and average standards of living are, and whether they're improving.
It requires no talent, only power, to take people's stuff and redistribute it.
It requires talent and effort to create new things that raise the bar for everyone, and just as much to maintain the political environment that allows that to happen.
I don't know if that fits your story; if not apologies, as I didn't mean to hijack it!
> the problem isn't inequality, it's how good the low and average standards of living are, and whether they're improving
I understand this perspective, but I still think inequality is important. Inequality is a measure of how good the low standards are Vs how good they could be.
I suppose that's true, but I don't think that's how it's used.
Also, that's only useful where it's helpful. We don't live in a world where everyone can eat expensive meals every night, because those require work from other people.
What is actually helpful is the rich buying a load of stuff, some of which is crazy, and the useful things are identified by entrepreneurs as being worthy of trying to bring to mass market, and then suddenly (almost) everyone can afford them, and they can even be sold in other countries for a lower price that couldn't make them in the next 500 years. E.g. reading glasses were once for the rich, and now are so prevalent that we don't realise what a privilege being able to access them is.
But none of that requires knowledge of inequality. Simple market forces will do that.
Humans are social creatures with an innate sense of “status”. Absolute material inequality is only one form of inequality.
You can feed, clothe, and give iPhones to the very poor but if they are at the bottom of a very deep social hierarchy with no hope to climb out of it, that inequality is still going to cause a lot of problems. People might turn to a life of crime for lack of better options, or participate into a violent machismo culture in an attempt to salvage their masculinity/status as a man.
Of course, the fallacy of every attempt at socialism is that “abolishing class” simply replaces the capitalist social hierarchy with a new hierarchy based on position within the Party or blessed sectors like the military, science, or intelligence, complete with large differences in material living standards. However, a greatly reduced disparity in living standards and material conditions does have positive social effects IMO. Consider that deaths of despair, poverty, and desperation are much higher under the Russian Federation than the USSR. I’m not saying that communism or socialism are good by any means, but I think there are real net benefits to low inequality sometimes even if they come at the expense of overall lower living standards.
> However, a greatly reduced disparity in living standards and material conditions does have positive social effects IMO. Consider that deaths of despair, poverty, and desperation are much higher under the Russian Federation than the USSR. I’m not saying that communism or socialism are good by any means, but I think there are real net benefits to low inequality sometimes even if they come at the expense of overall lower living standards.
It's interesting that the fear of being accused of sympathizing with Communism is so ingrained in the English speaking world that the simplest thought of claiming that inequality is bad and should be reduced must be coached in so many disclaimers of "but I'm not saying I like socialism" and "I'm sure living in that society was terrible".
I don't fault you, mind you. There's good reason to fear this backlash in a world that is rapidly equating Communism to Nazism and all forms of socialism and redistribution to Stalinism.
I know I'm making a mistake in posting this thought so plainly here, for example.
I think you might be inferring too much about my phrasing. I wasn't trying to add token disclaimers to pass off praise of socialism/communism - I was trying to get ahead of the reply "yeah but the cons far outweigh the pros"/"there are better ways to ensure equality than making everybody poor", which are actually positions I'd agree with.
I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to consider "capitalism vs socialism" less as a black and white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and more as a vast spectrum or cluster of policies. In reality, those are the kinds of systems we live with. Even if you find yourself firmly on one side of the spectrum, or in favor of policies mostly in one cluster, I think we should be intellectually curious enough to look at the other side and see what kind of ideas they have, because some of them might be good.
I think we're mostly in agreement, and let me clarify I wasn't even trying to disagree with you on anything.
> I wasn't trying to add token disclaimers to pass off praise of socialism/communism
This wasn't what I tried to imply, but evidently I should have expressed myself better: I think you raised valid points, and my observation was regret about the fact you -- like many in forums like this -- must coach every topic like this with disclaimers about not being communist sympathizers. You had to preempt the accusation by making it explicit this is not what you're saying, which to me is a sad state of affairs for online discourse. Like you said, we should be able to examine ideas from all sides "because some of them might be good", but this becomes very difficult if one must fend off accusations of being a commie for even daring to suggest something is positive about socialism.
> I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to consider "capitalism vs socialism" less as a black and white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and more as a vast spectrum or cluster of policies. In reality, those are the kinds of systems we live with.
Yes, 10000000% agreed. This is also what I believe. I wish we could discuss the more "socialist" side of policies more openly and without disclaimers.
> I know I'm making a mistake in posting this thought so plainly here, for example.
Loads of people, especially young people, talk about being communists and socialists and equity and so forth. It's extremely normalised, particularly amongst young people, whose largest percentage experience in life is one of parents giving them things. Those instincts transfer to politics, especially if encouraged to do so by university professors.
> the fear of being accused of sympathizing with Communism is so ingrained in the English speaking world
Most of this is not ingrained in the English speaking world, either. In the UK it's not a big thing compared to remembering Germany. Far fewer people know communism's death (and life) tolls in the 20th century than Nazi Germany's, for example, and how much worse it was even without a world war to bump the numbers up.
> There's good reason to fear this backlash in a world that is rapidly equating Communism to Nazism and all forms of socialism and redistribution to Stalinism.
You've decided the person does like socialism and communism, but is afraid to say so. That is not what they are saying, and while it could be what they mean, you are not able to discern that any more than anyone else is.
My comment does have content; it rejects your interpretation and also reasserts something: that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics, and they've been taught that there's no more evil thing than Communism, and therefore these topics are fraught with danger.
Anyone wishing to discuss anything even tangentially related to the aforementioned topics must carefully coach their words with disclaimers like "well, of course socialism doesn't work" and "of course Communism is authoritarian and evil", lest anyone even thinks they are supporting Stalinism or whatever.
Then you get the "history lessons" about death tolls and whatnot, and it's a really tiring topic. Or someone will mention teenagers sometimes go through a phase where they are drawn to communism because they don't understand life, or something trite like that.
So it's best to avoid, in English speaking forums, mention of redistribution, income inequality, or socialism; or if you cannot help yourself, then you must add lots of disclaimers that you are not a socialist and that you know that Communism is evil, or you'll engage in..
... I was going to say "conversations like this one", but this one is pretty mild so far, thankfully.
My final thought is that what I said is very descriptive of how these topics tend to go here on HN; it was just an observation. Not a treatise.
> that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics
I agree, but for the opposite reason. As soon as I replied to you, you stopped talking about the topic itself and started communicating how tired you were, and how laborious talking about all this is. That's why you can't have a rational discourse on this stuff.
But other people can, and do. And no one stops them.
> Maybe this assertion of yours didn't help? Are you willing to consider this?
I'll consider anything if it's mentioned. If you just said "Ah - I see what happened here. What I actually meant was ..." about 3 comments ago, we'd have had a regular conversation. I honestly don't understand this approach - even here you don't just say what you mean. You ask whether an assertion didn't help as though you aren't sure yourself.
I have much more success just talking plainly. Makes it much more fun and productive to talk about this stuff.
Plainly speaking, your assertion didn't help, since you put in my mouth words (or rather, meaning) I didn't say. That is not conducive to productive conversation.
My suggestion: next time instead of claiming what the other person meant, ask them what they mean. That way I think you will truly have "more success".
Does this sound acceptable to you? If it doesn't, I don't think we can continue having any kind of meaningful conversation.
I do understand that psychologically speaking, at this point it will be hard for you to back down or make any concessions. Note how you didn't even apologize for your mistaken claim, nor even acknowledge when I called you out on it explicitly. Fight this urge to be stubborn.
Yeah also compare western Europe to America. As we have much better welfare and higher taxes, income inequality is much lower here in Europe. And in particular violent crime is much much lower as a result.
I'm not saying going full communist is an option but all out everyone-for-themselves capitalism doesn't work either. And really why do people need to be able to have billions? They can never use it up in their lifetime anyway.
> As we have much better welfare and higher taxes, income inequality is much lower here in Europe. And in particular violent crime is much much lower as a result.
I don't think this is an obvious inference. There are many factors that cause crime, and violent crime. E.g. I don't know if this is valid, but as an example to consider: America has countries to its south that are markedly different in prosperity. As people move from those countries into America, wealth disparity goes up without anyone doing anything to make others poorer. If Western Europe doesn't have this same situation, then the disparity won't be constantly increased, and it's easier to optimise over time with taxes.
Or how about this: the US taxpayer pays for the majority of global defence. If you live in a Western European country, you have benefitted from this. You may have only recently joined NATO having suddenly realised it's time to buy some insurance one second before the car crash, and luckily for you the US is willing to be that insurer that accepts you. This means you could spend money on vote-winning policies instead of on national defence for a long time.
As I say, there are many factors. Just saying that raising taxes and increasing welfare are the keys to lowering violent crime is not sufficient, I think.
I'm satirizing the Western industry of dehumanizing/patronizing North Koreans. They are human beings just like us, even if our governments hate each other.
No society is the same. DPRK society is radically different than ours (e.g. by not valuing individualism), to the point that it causes a xenophobic reaction in a lot of people, but it is based on the same human fundamentals as ours.
I think your statements are really opaque in this conversation. It took until this post here before I had a clue what and what direction you were even going. Your other posts could have been read to indicate exactly the opposite of the one I'm responding to.
Ok serious question, what is it about North Korea that causes a subset of HN commenters to leap to it's defense? Russia, China, Iran, etc receive a similar treatment sometimes but never to nearly the degree NK does, what's with that?
Because it is so universally put down. There is a tendency to examine any totalistic claim more strongly, look for ways in which it is wrong similar to the "hipster" drive. I haven't defended NK here (although I have seriously looked into visiting it one day) but I'm sympathetic to the mindset that causes that reaction
I don't think my comment landed as intended - I was being sarcastic and trying to highlight how the original commentor was seemingly saying NK society is basically like every other country, when in fact it is incredibly different and not desirable at all
The usual result is you believe that all the sources that agree about how awful life in Russia, China, North Korea and so on are lying because the uniformity of their reporting is so consistent. (The obvious answer, that maybe it really does suck there for a lot of people, is dismissed as propaganda.)
Surprisingly smart people can be paranoid enough to believe everyone is lying to them or there’s some hidden secret to the world or politics only they can parse out; it’s easy for such people to fall down this rabbit hole.
That’s how most wind up being a tankie or Putin apologist or whatever.
You can hate the politics and foreign policy or various degrees of brutality in all of those countries, but implying Russia and China are as bad as North Korea is a little extreme. Doubly so when you imply any positive opinion is just contrarianism, when people on HN have freely traveled or even lived within the first two.
You can honestly have a pretty comfy life in the first two countries, especially as an expat. And at least with China, the brutality is hyped up to a point that it's disappointing when you arrive there expecting to be some rebel in some 1984 dystopia and find out people are happy and living a quality of life no different from Europe or the US. In some ways better (cheap cost of living, world-class public transport), and some ways worse (internet and freedom of speech is clearly restricted, but nowhere near the murderous levels of North Korea or even Russia arresting people disapproving of war. Just posts being blocked in 99.9999% of cases, like a heavy-handed version censorship you'd find on reddit but applied almost everywhere). Like a more relaxed version of the UK which arrests people for offensive twitter posts or teaching a dog an offensive salute.
In China, you might be disappointed to find that people would just shrug in response to you announcing that. Absolutely nobody cares. You'd get far less reaction than you would in some southern states or small towns in the US.
I have a husband and family. Same-sex marriage and adoption is illegal in China, but not anywhere in the US. I can’t speak to public attitudes, but I would assume that they are correspondingly worse in China.
Socially, nobody would care. Apparently China even grants marriage visas for same-sex couples, although locally it's not really possible to get married yet. But the vast majority of countries still have legal opposition to it so China isn't unique in that sense, although China is making clear changes towards by granting couples various legal benefits similar to typical marriages. It's ahead of some European countries.
Throughout east Asia, people really just do not care what others outside their family do and don't get upset about it. But because it's none of their concern, basically nobody bothers to march in the streets for it, and governments are slow to push for social change.
> Today in China, gestational surrogacy is illegal for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. Adoption is restricted to people in heterosexual marriages. This means gay people can't have kids.
China lags significantly behind basically any European country in terms of gay rights and gay families and it’s getting worse:
Italy has is forcing apart LGBT families as we speak but nobody talks about that.
> Today in China, gestational surrogacy is illegal for everyone
That sounds less like a problem for LGBT people and one for everyone. And that's not unique to China. Japan and Korea don't recognize it. And to bring up Italy again, it's illegal there.
China really isn't exceptionally bad in any of these aspects. It's really just at the global standard. The US, mostly due to places like California, New York, and Massachusetts, is paving the way for this. A large portion of the US (red states) is kicking and screaming and trying to find ways to get the courts to strike it down as we speak, or repeatedly passing laws to restrict it that get immediately struck down by courts.
And again, Italy is happily pushing the opposite direction. The consensus in east Asia as a whole is "whatever. Who cares" (with Taiwan being the sole exception), which is at least better than that. But Italy will keep topping travel and expat destinations despite being actively more antagonistic to LGBT families.
Practically everything you read on the western media about NK is completely made up. It's a country with a seemingly endless supply of fan fiction!
My favourite kind of fan fiction about NK is... let me think... ah yes, when Kim Jong Un has had some family member executed... only for them to reappear a few months later.
I'm sure they do research like any other scientist hopes to do, but they might focus on North Korea specific things like coal chemistry (North Korea has huge coal deposits but very little petroleum, so coal chemistry has a niche there). They probably also focus on a lot of dual-use research like computer security stuff which can be done without having huge resources.
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in North Korea is a sadist or a torturer, although most are totally indoctrinated into the system from birth.
An example: vinylon. [1] Briefly popular in the early 20th century, North Korea is about the only place in the world that still makes or uses the stuff.
It can be made from coal and limestone which are some of the few resources North Korea has. Similar to nylon or polyester, except stiffer. It's the material used for those shiny suits the North Korean officials wear. [2] A significant % of all clothing in the country is made from it at a couple big plants.
There is probably slave labour involved in its production. And yet one can say at the same time that, making Vinylon, in a very cold country, is probably significant and meaningful work for many of the middle and upper management and scientific types involved in it, yes.
Some models of how bad North Korea is (and it is hard to overstate, really, but some do) seem to require the North Korean people be almost inhuman in their endurance.
What's funny is that those extremely popular Fjällräven Kånken bags are made from Vinylon F, which the company strenuously claims is not of North Korean origin.
The same thing that all white-collar workers around the world do. Optimize industrial processes and paper-push in business administration jobs.
As in any society, there are four castes of people. The people who do work, the middle managers who oversee and direct the people doing work, the ruling class, and the security apparatus that keeps the first two, and elements of the third in line.
I doubt it, honestly. I don't mean the scientists are evil, not all of them at least, but they will be forced to do work for the regime, or end up in one of those camps in the mountains. NK is closer to a Mexican cartel in its structure, than to a typical bureaucracy you're describing here, and they operate on the principle "do the evil to those weaker than you, or you will be subjected to this evil yourself".
I was a horrible college student when I was younger. For a variety of reasons. I quit school, got lucky, and fell into a good tech career.
Many many years later after age 40 I was laid off, wanted a new career path / job, I took a few classes and eventually a bootcamp and changed careers. I was really nervous as far as how it would all play out knowing how terrible I was previously.
It was completely different. The idea that I would go into a room each day and someone would drop some knowledge on me was thrilling. A few other older students like me felt the same way. We were always up front if possible, active, it was a JOY to go to class each day.
Meanwhile I was surrounded by younger folks who reminded me of me as far as being perfectly capable, but low enthusiasm, effort, attention and interest level.
Education, and youth is sometimes wasted on the young. I only wish I could have gone back to school more.
I go to the local university now and then. Despite all the challenges, those folks don't seem to know how good they have it, but I can't judge, neither did I.
I think the biggest difference is feeling like you're in control of your life: Are you in college because someone told you to go, or did you go voluntarily?
I really wanted a break halfway through college, so I went on co-op. This forced me to go back (to college at the end of the co-op), and I never lost my status as a student (during the co-op). But, for a little more than 6 months, I was an independent adult, working, in charge of my life, at a place where I wanted to be.
A friend of mine dropped out of Caltech due to bad grades. I ran into him a decade later, and he said he'd recently graduated from Caltech, having gone back and gotten A's.
I asked him what changed, did you get smarter?
He laughed, and said no, this time I was willing to work.
I’m an alum and know several people who did the same thing - dropped out and came back 10 years later and finished.. Caltech was often nice about it and I believe they didn’t have to reapply.
Did he have to reapply? Acceptance rates have gone pretty steadily down at most worthwhile colleges since the 1970s. It would be surprising if a candidate got more attractive to a school as time went on.
I'm kind of curious about the process of applying to Caltech overall, as someone who didn't have the opportunity to apply to anywhere at 18, but would very much like to when I get the chance. If a person wants to get into an elite university like it or MIT, what should they optimize for? I've known people with near-perfect SAT scores that didn't get into either. Is it mostly luck-based, after what few obvious things you can control?
Sorry, I know this is probably the most frequently asked question you get any time you bring up your alma mater.
He did not have to reapply. Caltech's stance is once you're admitted, you are welcome to come back and keep trying. I know one who came back multiple times. Your credits don't expire, either, like they do other places. It's one of the great things about Caltech. The administration was just made up of nice people.
I can only speak for the process that was in place when I applied back in the 70s. I sent them a letter asking for an application, which they sent to me. I filled it out, and sent it in with a check for the application fee. Nobody helped me with it, nor was I coached.
They had some specific requirements, like you had to graduate from high school, but I knew one person they waived that for.
What they looked for was a triad:
1. high school success
2. high SAT scores
3. evidence you're a highly motivated person
You had to have all three. And it worked for Caltech - being around smart people can be fun, being around motivated people can be fun, being around smart and motivated people means you're going to have more fun than you ever thought possible.
Caltech wasn't a place where you talked about football. If you wanted to have Carl Sagan drop by the dorm and talk about silicon giraffes, that was what was fun. If your room was next to Hal Finney's, that was fun. If a couple doors down was a guy who designed and built a working computer out of NAND gates, that was fun. If the guy 4 doors down built a powerful amplifier, and set up a giant set of speakers at the nodes of the hall and hooked it to a signal generator to emit sound below the hearing range, but was at the resonant frequency of the building, so it soon would start to go whump whump whump ... hahaha I was never bored for 4 years. Never.
I'd be a bit careful about optimizing for it. You really have to want to go there, and for the people who thrive there, it just is who they are. Caltech just wanted to be sure that the ones they admitted would be a natural fit, not an optimized fit. If you're not a natural fit, you won't be happy there, and will drop out. Nobody wants that.
I was told years later that they were skeptical about my application, and so sent someone out to interview me. He couldn't get a word in edgewise as I went off on all the projects I was working on, showed him diagrams of them, etc. He told the committee he thought I was worth taking a chance on.
I was rejected by MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, despite being legacy for MIT and Harvard.
> Thanks for making D, by the way!
You're welcome! Working on D is a great pleasure of mine. The way Caltech was run is how I've tried to run the D Language Foundation. In many ways the DLF community is our very own Caltech :-)
I've heard stories, my dad went there in the early 60's as a physics major, dropped out and then got a PhD in asian history from a different school, then lived in Japan for a while, taught university history for a while, then came back to the US and became a computer programmer (Cobol mostly) until he retired. He told stories like that but I didn't really believe it until the movie "Real Genius (1985)" put it on film. From what I hear, the pranks in the movie are lame shadows of the real ones but it's a movie and it gets the vibe across for me. Trying to understand my dad a little, that movie helped. Anyway, Caltech sounds cool. And the guy living in the closet would be doing crypto or AI now. :)
His last project was trying to write a comprehensive history of Japan for wikipedia. I helped him upload it and it's buried in Wikibooks somewhere now and I like to think that some of his work is going to end up in the training material for some future AI like a ghost.
Yes, Real Genius gives a sense of what Caltech life was like (except for the absurd ending). The director wanted to film it on the campus, but Caltech (normally very accommodating to Hollywood) refused, thinking it would be bad publicity. So the director found other buildings built in the same style, so it looked like Caltech anyway.
When I was there, one year we built a railroad that ran through the dorm, and another year a jungle cruise with boats.
Having been young more recently I can help you remember what you may have forgotten. Being young comes with a lot of stressors that take away from your agency, and your ability to see any positive outcome from effort. Whether that is relentless potential demand from a parent, inability to choose what to eat or do, or study, where to go, no car, no money, mate competition, etc. I found education to be very enjoyable in elementary school, then horrible in my teens, but very enjoyable in my early 20s when i had a bank account with even just 10k in it. Teachers treated me like shit in middle school by default, and in high school it was definitely harrassment. The material was often not rich enough to support the duration I was required to sit and stare at it. I was required to ask permission to urinate. The teachers may not have been intelligent enough to understand a persuasive argument in an essay. Math was the only consistently good outlier.
In university the worse a teacher ever was to me was bad or ambivalent, but the educational resources were so deep personal pursuit felt like it had infinite potential.
Im assuming at 40 years old these things have all been forgotten. Im sure the same is happening to me.
Yeah, it's weird how I didn't care about school at all when I was younger, but now I feel like it would be absolutely amazing to be able to learn all of this as it is. I think it's mainly though because I've experienced more of "actual life" and trying to survive on my own so all of that speaks more to me. Otherwise it seems like it's clueless theory I am forced to learn, but now I can relate my own life's experience with it.
The thing about experience and hindsight are clearly stated within their names. You don't accumulate either without being time served.
You may have some times where you actually decided to "carpe diem" and when you look back on those days, you will realise you made the best of things. As you get older, hopefully those positive experiences gradually accumulate, rather than being drowned out by negative experiences, which sadly make themselves up.
Sadly, bits tend to fall off or sag as we get older. It is the way of things. However, with luck your mind stays reasonably sharp for longer than the rest of you!
Part of the reason Western countries are so successful is precisely because we don't treat it as a privilege, but as a given.
So appreciate it as a privilege where it's not a given, like in shithole countries, but please do treat it as something that should be a given, that's what separates shitholes from beacons of light and truth, i.e. the West.
Why are you watering down the word "privilege"? Historically privilege was an exemption from taxes due to the fact that one of your ancestors helped some king in a war.
How exactly is education a privilege? At least in the US, everyone has access to public education. My kids go to public school, and while I can't say their education is perfect, it's not that bad either. You could probably say that private education is a privilege, but education in general? Why?
There's a danger when playing with words like this.
Privilege is bad. It's something we, as society, should strive to eliminate. When you say education is a privilege, what is the message there?
I understand that the OP, and you, are trying to convey a message of this type: I should be thankful that I get X, not everyone in the world gets X, and I will try to remind myself that X should not be taken for granted. Where X is education, but it can also be clean water, or maybe just the right to live, or the right to not go to a reeducation camp if you criticize the "dear leader".
I subscribe to that type of thinking.
I just don't think that using the word "privilege" is the best way to express this idea.
Reading this brought back a vivid memory of listening to Voice of Korea about 20 years ago.
I had a shortwave receiver in my Honda Civic - a Sony AM/FM/shortwave/cassette that was a drop-in replacement for the factory radio. On the way to work at Adobe in San Jose one day, I tuned in North Korea's English-language broadcast beamed to North America.
One news announcement stuck in my mind so vividly that I remember it word for word to this day:
"Scientists are studying the brain of Respected Comrade Kim Jong-il, because the Respected Comrade is capable of feats of mental power beyond the ability of ordinary human beings."
Hard to disagree. Am curious to see what they found. I imagine most powerful/manipulative peoples brains are shaped differently and excel in ways we mere mortals don’t necessarily consider.
This author is also living in South Korea which by law bans you to speak positively about North Korea. Not to say NK isn’t bad, but you are unable to have an honest and balanced discussion about it in the media while you live in SK.
Indeed, there actually was a conviction of an elderly man via the NSA within the past few weeks. 14 months in jail for a poem.
> In this latest case, Lee Yoon-seop was accused of submitting a poem in 2016 to the Uriminzokkiri website, which is a state-controlled North Korean website. Submitted as part of a competition run by the website back in 2016, it praised North Korea, stating that “if the two Koreas were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education.” The sentencing court said that Lee had glorified and praised North Korea and had threatened the “existence and security of the country or the basic liberal democratic order over a long period of time.”
On the other hand, Americans lack the perspective of a society that has been invaded multiple times in the last century. And remains under threat from one such dangerous and hostile invader.
Framing it as violating a noble ideal of “free speech” I think gives it more importance than it deserves.
Seems plausible such a trade off is a net good for South Korea. We live in the misinformation age. Look at the crazy stuff some people believe. South Korea has effectively outlawed pro North Korea propaganda. Hard to quantify the averted harm of such a policy, but the price seems minimal.
Balanced against the science fiction that Koreans could be programmed into welcoming an invader with open arms is the real life fact that somebody was put in jail for the crime of writing poetry.
Since you don’t seem to be aware, propaganda could have negative real world impact influencing (not even mind control!) a small group of people. Imagine the impact is only a group of 5 people “defect” to North Korea under the belief it is some paradise. Thats harms.
That's just bad advice. How can you ban bad advice? I can't imagine what society would be like if nonprofessionals had liability for the harms that came to other people as a result of acting on their opinions, the way we have liabilities for doctors or lawyers in a client-provider relationship. Yeesh, you'd be putting people in jail for the crime of being dumb online.
I'm exhausted by catchy headlines that don't prep me as to whether I'll be interested in reading the piece. This article is about:
Kim Ju-sŏng was one such aspiring writer. A “zainichi” (Japan-born ethnic Korean), he “returned” to North Korea in 1976 at age 16 as part of a wave of emigration encouraged by pro-North Korean groups in Japan and lived in the country for 28 years before defecting to South Korea.
Note that it's practically illegal for someone living in South Korea to publish anything positive about the DPRK (North Korea)[1][2][3].
> [Amnesty International] described the National Security Act as a tool to harass and arbitrarily prosecute individuals and civil society organizations who are peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, opinion and association.
It's important to understand voices like this in the broader context of the Korean War, which is technically still ongoing, and manifests today largely as an economic and propaganda war, as well as an entrenched territorial stalemate.
DPRK "defectors" often get international media attention, and then their claims are surprisingly commonly debunked in following years[4].
For example, Yeonmi Park became famous in 2014, making startling claims about living in the DPRK— children being forced to eat mud, not taught basic math (even 1+1=2), and had no access to world maps or ice cream. Many of her claims were debunked, even by other defectors[5]. Despite her seemingly clear lack of credibility, many US media figures continue to host her for interviews.
Sometimes defectors even admit they lied after becoming internationally famous and publishing a best seller, such as Shin Dong Hyuk[6].
The claim of the OP's author (couldn't get recognition for my work in DPRK) is especially ironic for this reason. In South Korea and the West, there is a thriving media industry focusing on the harrowing stories of people from the North.
Also note, South Korea pays a reward of $860,000 to cooperating defectors[7], and has been accused of trafficking and forcing DPRK citizens to defect against their will[8][9]. When defectors arrive in South Korea, they are put through a rigorous interrogation, deprogramming, Christian indoctrination, and naturalization program at an institution called Hanawon. One defector noted, "At Hanawon, it seemed that I was being brainwashed again, even though I had arrived in freedom."
I wonder how it is in US. Are there obscure writers living only from writing ? Where I live, a lot of writers have a daily job as journalists or NGOs so they don't seem to make much money from writing. And the bookstores are filled with "cheap crap" noone reads.
Unfortunately no, Goodreads says it’s only been translated into Korean and Chinese.
I’d say buy it from Amazon or wherever, but then the paperback needs OCR and afaik Amazon.co.jp doesn’t sell ebooks outside Japan…
Or perhaps try the movie, which is available with English subtitles.
I used it to read some webnovels a few months ago. It's much better than other machine translators (like google or deepl) but it's a bit tedious to use because of the character limit.
Sceptical that an LLM would produce good literary translations - that requires a nuanced understanding of the author's rhythm and style. Maybe if the model was trained only with writing from that one particular author.
Deepl might do a decent job and it supports pdfs and other document formats. We use it a lot for translating business documents and contracts. Mainly between German and English. But they support Japanese too.
Negociating with a Japanese publishing house is probably 3 times the effort of translating the text itself. I'm interested in the book myself and I can read some Japanese (and know people more proficient than me who could translate it), but that's a no go because of intellectual property.
In communist country, as an author, you have to praise some ideals and ideas because otherwise you are being ostracized and dying from hunger. In a modern "democratic" society you have to praise some ideals and ideas because otherwise you are being ostracized and dying from hunger.
It's so nice to have choices and to be able to freely write whatever you think or you fancy...
Nah, that's a load of horsecrap. In a modern "democratic" society you can praise staunch leftist ideas (Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Tariq Ali) or very right ones (Ayn Rand, Roger Scruton, Milton Friedman) and be respected.
Liu Cixin supports Uighur concentration camps and is widely popular.
You can literally self-publish and sell almost anything on Amazon or similar sites. Very fringe opinions still find they readers and buyers.
Of course if you start spilling vile racist, misogynistic and hateful slop you might get shamed. Rightfully.
I grew up in a communist country and you have no idea about the censorship back then. And North Korea is way worse.
A related article was posted a few months ago regarding North Korean sci-fi. Also fascinating!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37291007