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The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of his high school teachers
- jrubinovitz 15y agoAs a computer science student, I don't really have time to read as much material unrelated to Computer Science as I would like, so this was quite a treat. Thanks for bravely humanizing Kim Jung Il and North Korea, and reminding us why we need to change the world, Mr. Kim Hyun Sik (author).
- askar_yu 15y ago"As a computer science student, I don't really have time to read as much material unrelated to Computer Science as I would like..." I was a CS student who had a very alike mindset and I regret that. In hindsight I wish I had not let the "being a CS student" mentality serve as an excuse in my lack of literacy in other important subjects.
- jrubinovitz 15y agoIt's more like having to take 19 credits a semester to graduate within my budget and working 20+ hours a week does not leave me much time for unassigned reading, but I will take that suggestion to heart whenever possible (hopefully during this winter break).
- hessenwolf 15y agoThere is time to catch up afterwards. After I graduated, I knew almost nothing outside mathematics and programming, but 3 years, even just reading newspapers, will catch you up on a lot.
- sliverstorm 15y agoAgreed! I certainly haven't learned enough to make a job for myself out of other skills, but developing breadth is not limited to college.
- askar_yu 15y agoFair enough. I've had couple 19-20 credit semesters which I barely survived; and I did not work during school. I've always admired those (especially international students) who worked while handling such workload as yours; yet excelled in their course works.
- jbooth 15y agoTake an hour a day to read some news, the articles are typically short enough that it's more "relaxation" than "work", and after a while you're caught up enough on the context to understand the significance of stories and to put on your critical thinking cap and notice agendas once in a while.
- chernevik 15y agoRead _good_ newspapers, critically. Seek out good writing of views you disagree with. When you start asking questions the articles don't answer, shift time and attention into books in the core subject. Even the best journalism doesn't go anything like deep enough. Your understanding should reach a point where an hour a day in newspapers is like taking a long walk to train for a marathon.
- sliverstorm 15y ago19 credits and 20 hours of work a week does not really allow an hour a day of "relaxation" time. Unless 19 credits is a bit lighter than what I am familiar with.
- jblock 15y agoIf you isolate yourself from the world entirely during your collegiate years, it'll be harder to re-assimilate when you're done.
- Jach 15y agoPoor excuse. (But "lack of time" almost always is a poor excuse.) Even assuming the ridiculous credits*2 hours outside of school for school work, and assuming 8 hours of sleep every night (haha), and assuming the standard 1 credit = 1 hour in class, you still have 32 hours of free time across Saturday and Sunday that you could probably spread around if you wanted. "Lack of time" is such a handy excuse, I'd try hard to investigate an underlying reason since there are so many. As an idea of just a few, it could be that you really have no interest in other subjects (probably not if you enjoyed the article), or that you don't want people to think you're goofing off, or that all your free time is unwittingly sucked away through passive relaxation like t.v. "Perceived poor allocation of time" seems like a real thing to me. Lately I've noticed myself beating myself up for spending time "reading/making things I don't have to", since I love random Wikipedia walks or interesting pages from google searches or reading online papers or books (even paper ones from the library sometimes), I love reading things that aren't necessarily computer related (and especially things I know they don't teach me in school or at work). But if I beat myself up over it and/or spend time with "passive relaxation" such as entertainment (whether because humans need a certain amount of passive down time or because I want to avoid thinking about [meta-]berating myself), suddenly I can't focus enough to read those interesting things since that background thought is always present. This happened a lot last semester; 20 credits is the average at my school. (People still find time to play lots of video games.) My current solution is to take a reduced load in the spring (possibly a gap year if my grades continue to suffer) and massively inflate my free time such that spending a large chunk of time reading about quantum physics doesn't feel like something I shouldn't do, and such that my free time isn't used up hating 6.5/7 of my classes since it'd be reduced to maybe 3/4. (There are only two classes left in my program I actually care about.) I'm glad my burnout is localized to school, though, since even some of the cruft work at work is 100 times more interesting than any of my previous semester's assignments.
- protomyth 15y agoI would recommend you spend a fair amount of time reading material on human behavior such as biographies and histories. It will save you a lot of time in designing systems and processes for people.
- JonnieCache 15y agoAs a counterpoint, I would encourage you to absorb things that are utterly useless, such as poetry. One must remember that not everything needs a practical function to justify itself. "Enriching the human spirit" sounds handwavey, but it's a very real and important idea.
- ianstormtaylor 15y agoOr you could approach poetry with critical thought and understand how and why it is made, perhaps even improving your own writing and reasoning skills at the same time, instead of treating it as "utterly useless".
- JonnieCache 15y agoI meant it in the sense of the Oscar Wilde quote: "All art is useless." It's what distinguishes it from worldly concerns. Its uselessness confers on it a nobility, if you will. I guess what he really meant is that art is purposeless, rather than useless, but the statement doesn't have the same impact that way. Obviously this is but one way to conceptualise it.
- fufulabs 15y agoIt boggles my mind how little anyone, inside or outside, has done to change North Korea. Maybe i am just ignorant of how difficult it is or the attempts done.
- bitops 15y agoIt is easy to say that North Korea should change. What is difficult is articulating the type of change that one would like to see occur and how to implement it. Should Kim Jong-Il have been ousted a la Saddam Hussein in Iraq? How dangerous would that have been, considering that North Korea has nuclear arms? What to do in case of a conflict that spills over into neighboring countries? What would China's take on all of it be? Would they stand idly by or back up their Communist cousin? Once the dictator is gone, what do you do? Let the military take over and potentially let it establish a junta government, Myanmar-style? Or do you try to install democracy forcibly? Would the right thing to do be to hand North Korea over to South Korea, integrating the two countries by shotgun wedding? The complexities quickly exponentiate. Consider the cultural shock of the North Koreans once they're introduced to modern South Korean culture alone. If German re-unification is any indicator, putting together two halves of a country that have been split into Communism and western capitalism is not a trivial task. Also consider the cult of personality built up around Kim Jong-Il. The situation in N. Korea could quickly become explosive once people realize the deceit they've been living in. So it's difficult thing to do, just by itself. All the econo-political ramifications just make it that much harder.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- InclinedPlane 15y agoNuclear weapons barely change the equation. The best estimate is that North Korea could begin firing around 10,000 artillery shells per minute into densely populated suburbs areas around Seoul on a moment's notice. Even if through some masterful and historic level of effort we managed to shut down those artillery bombardments or evacuate the targeted areas in a mere half an hour that still leaves hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and huge numbers of homes and businesses destroyed. It would be a destruction on the scale of a natural disaster such as the earthquake off Japan earlier this year. Add in the very real possibility of North Korean nuclear weapons landing on Seoul, Tokyo, Taiwan or maybe even the US mainland and that starts focusing your thinking about how worthwhile it would have to be to depose the North Korean regime.
- mattparlane 15y agolittle hint: javascript:$('body').css('margin', '0 200px');
- MrMatters 15y agoHmm. How long has Chrome removed the 'javascript:' when you paste into a URL bar? I assume it's to prevent users from blindly running JS, but is there a way to disable it?
- csomar 15y agoYou can use the console (CTR+ALT+I)
- harlanlewis 15y agoI actually rather like that 'remove on paste', default to educating/transparency instead of blindly running. Manually typing the prepended 'javascript:' works fine. Don't see any settings to disable (even in chrome://flags). Chrome's Javascript Console would also work.
- nathanhammond 15y agohttps://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527530 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527530 Conversation in that thread implies May or June of this year (2011).
- Dobbs 15y agoOn Firefox you can press: 'View' -> 'Page Style' -> 'No Style'.
- pyrotechnick 15y agoIf you use Chrome, try 'File' -> 'Print...' (Command-P on OSX)
- 20after4 15y agohttp://www.readability.com/bookmarklets http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets
- rokhayakebe 15y agoYou have to wonder. Millions of people living under the dictatorship of one man ( with the help of a few dozens leaders). I feel terrible for the young women, and kids. However the rest of the population can get up and fight. Hundreds of thousands will die, but someone has to be willing to die for the sake of the liberty of others.
- candre717 15y agoThe article points out that one possible reason for the people's reluctance is distrust. In the case of the author, his family died because of a double agent. Who is to say that if you conspire with your fellow comrades to overthrow your leader, one of your peers will not out you. Civil unrest does not work without undying social trust.
- zura 15y agoThe main problem is realizing that you need to fight. It is not that easy if you're continuously brainwashed since childhood.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoNorth Korea is very much a totalitarian regime in every sense of the word. Everything flows from the state. Food. News. Entertainment. Education. Jobs. Everything. And it has been totalitarian for around 2/3rds of a century. It's very difficult to fight against something so ingrained and omni-present. From without it's also difficult to imagine toppling the North Korean regime. To do so would almost inevitably result in quite literally hundreds of thousands of dead South Korean civilians in a matter of hours (through artillery). And perhaps just as many dead South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or American civilians dead through a nuclear attack. That sort of cold calculus makes it very hard to make the decision to end the DPRK regime.
- spodek 15y agoWell put. North Korea's military could easily be beaten -- if you don't mind possibly hundreds of thousands of South Korean and Japanese killed by their missiles. You'd win the war but lose a battle no one would consider worth losing. You'd also have to negotiate with China first, so they know you'll stop invading well before their border. Last time the U.S. incurred too far into North Korea contributed to China entering the Korean War. North Korea effectively holds South Korea and Japan hostage with its missiles. It acts belligerently to make credible its threats to use them. Meanwhile, the people don't know things could be better. They aren't stupid or brainwashed. The state simply controls nearly all information entering the country. They believe they have nothing to envy from the rest of the world and that the U.S. is starving them. From their perspective they have no reason to revolt. They have no internet or knowledge of revolutions elsewhere in the world.
- bitops 15y agoThis link is more browser friendly: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/08/12/the_secret_history_of_kim_jong_il http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/08/12/the_secret_...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rplnt 15y agoThe first one is more human friendly though.
- SystemOut 15y agoCould someone edit the link and remove the "print" query parameter? It's pretty annoying that the page pops up the print option on chrome upon loading.
- harryf 15y agoMuch as it's a fascinating story my BS alarm is flashing. Is there anyone at Georg Mason University who can confirm Professor Kim Hyun Sik actually exists?
- sunchild 15y agoThe source has a solid reputation, as far as I know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy
- Mavyrk 15y agoIf he doesn't exist, there's an awful lot of gatherings with him as a guest speaker at universities hitting on Google over the past four years from 07 to 2010, and he was (if Google can be believed) a visiting professor at Yale from 03-06 up until becoming a research professor at GMU.
- yink 15y agoI attended a talk he gave at Duke University either in 2010 or 2009.
- harryf 15y agoThanks for the confirmation
- mqzaidi 15y agoI am finding a few things hard to believe as well. In the commonwealth games, the Indian Government rounded up beggars and sent them out of Delhi. In the Iraq war, GWB banned the media from covering body bags. Every state is guilty of this ,so unless the deliberate crippling part is true, it may just be another exercise in FUD, much like the weapons of mass destruction.
- drumdance 15y agoThe FUD would be a lot easier to refute if NK would actually let people into and (especially) out of their country without a security apparatus monitoring their every move.
- yogrish 15y agoTouching story. But,author never mentioned why he changed so much and became ruthless...not even sparing his teachers family.
- lusr 15y agoYes it's more like a collection of anecdotes that have almost no bearing on the title.
- nestlequ1k 15y agoIt's interesting info. I don't think you're going to find anyone who is able to speak with the full story. Given how locked down that country is, and how many smart people were murdered for no reason.
- lusr 15y agoAgreed; my response reads a bit dismissive, but I did enjoy the article. I would still love to read more about the process of a (presumably innocent) person becoming a dictator. Were they molded, and if so by what forces? How much of it was a natural process like what happened to the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
- mml 15y ago"under the loving care of the fatherly leader" is a fascinating and quite in-depth history of the regime.
- nestlequ1k 15y agoI think the article sort of gave a better reasoning for the madness of Kim Jong Il. Basically he became ruler because he was so ruthless. His father selected the craziest out of the bunch.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- vnorby 15y ago"Even today, long after becoming the sole supreme leader of North Korea, Kim refuses to allow graduates of the Namsan School in his inner circle. After all, those who have known Kim Jong Il since youth are bound to see him as human -- not the center of a god-like cult of personality." In the new Steve Jobs biography, Walter Isaacson quotes Steve on why he didn't let his parents come to his school's campus: "I didn't want anyone to know I had parents. I wanted to be like an orphan who had bummed around the country on trains and just arrived out of nowhere, with no roots, no connections, no background." Interesting how powerful people manipulate the story of how they got to be where they are. Speaking of which, I was raised by wolves.
- jayair 15y agoYou too? I'm not sure if it is just powerful people. I think in many ways we all want to live in a world that fits with our image of ourselves. And some work harder than others to make it happen.
- SeamusBrady 15y agoYes another piece of evidence to backup my nascent opinion that there is very little to admire in Steve Jobs.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> I didn't want anyone to know I had parents. As anyone who is the parents of teenagers can tell you: That describes pretty much describes a large fraction of that age group. There is a psychological growth phase which involves separation, and that is one manifestation.
- jseliger 15y ago"There is a psychological growth phase which involves separation, and that is one manifestation." I wonder if this phase is actually about teen social structures and hierarchies as they've developed in Western countries. I'm reminded of something pg wrote in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular:" http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html : I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy. So I wonder if a large fraction of the age group want to reject their parents because of the way they've been raised and schooled. You obviously didn't argue that this phase is universal, but I still find the idea interesting.
- Zeus-TheTrueGod 15y agoWhy politics topic on HackerNews? I don't know how bad north korea is, and how poor their people is, just how can USA bring democracy to a country which has a nuclear weapon?
- michaelbuckbee 15y agoIf you found this at all interesting, I would highly recommend watching the Vice Guide to North Korea - http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3 http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-n...
- simondlr 15y agoWatched it yesterday. Incredibly strange and unreal to think such a fabricated society is possible in these times.
- megablast 15y agoWe all do. You would be surprised what u believe that isn't true.
- euccastro 15y agohttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730
- nodemaker 15y agowow....thanks for that!...kinnof reignited my interest in Chomsky and his ideas of libertarian socialism!...If anyone wants to learn more about the role of propaganda in our society I highly recommend the documentary "The Century of the self". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM
- jritch 15y agowatched this a few times - very interesting yet also disturbing at times. Hats off to vice, I find most of their guides really interesting
- spodek 15y agoThis National Geographic episode about an eye doctor who visited North Korea shows North Korea from the inside without showing off how cool the film makers are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxLBywKrTf4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxLBywKrTf4
- futurerun 15y agoHeavy Story...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr8oBFXXnts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr8oBFXXnts
- ck2 15y agoThat guy strikes me as "Bridge on the River Kwai" - happens to be rarely well educated in a crippling environment and knows the "leader" is not a good person but to hell with that he is going to do his job as good as possible even if it means his own destruction and furtherment of the enemy standing right in front of him. Evil dictators are evil - so are all the people that do their little part to help him because they cannot find anything wrong with doing their little job as best they can. But so is a mindless military in ANY country who sign on to take directions to kill other people at the behest of a single leader that they aren't supposed to question.
- drumdance 15y agoI found this graphic novel by a French cartoonist who worked in North Korea to be fascinating: http://www.amazon.com/Pyongyang-Journey-North-Guy-Delisle/dp/1897299214/1 http://www.amazon.com/Pyongyang-Journey-North-Guy-Delisle/dp...
- findm 15y agoI found the article to be an interesting read but I wish that someone could talk about the psychology, history behind why the country became that way instead of just finger pointing on how terrible the conditions were. While its difficult to feel any empathy towards a manipulative, despotic, authoritarian regime, I also think that most westerners misunderstand and underestimate the people and their situation. The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. This is just how the country was for over 2 millennia. The north, especially due to its easily defensible mountainous terrain, has always played a pivotal role in keeping larger more powerful threats from absorbing the whole. Considering its history it sheds some light into understanding their extreme xenophobia. Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? This is a culture steeped in confucianism, the patriarch is supreme and group cohesion and harmony is of higher importance than the needs of an individual. Even linguistically, social order is embedded into the language with many different levels of honorifics for different rank and class. A little off-topic but just my 2 cents. The Caste System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- CWuestefeld 15y agoWesterners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name. In any case, your reference to linguistic differences probably doesn't hold up. - - - Quote [1] Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been. When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. - - - End Quote and also - - - Quote [2] ...the strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. ... Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Inuit people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English. The notion that Arctic people have an unusually large number of words for snow has been shown to be false by linguist Geoffrey Pullum; in an essay titled "The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax", he tracks down the origin of the story, ultimately attributing it largely to Whorf and suggesting the triviality of Whorf's observations. ... A recent study by Peter Gordon examines the language of the Pirahã tribe of Brazil. According to Gordon, the language used by this tribe only contains three counting words: one, two and many. Gordon shows through a series of experiments that the people of the Pirahã tribe have difficulty recounting numbers higher than three (Gordon, 2004). However, the causal relationship of these events is not clear. Critics have argued that if the test subjects are unable to count numbers higher than three for some other reason (perhaps because they are nomadic hunter/gatherers with nothing to count and hence no need to practice doing so) then one should not expect their language to have words for such numbers. That is, it is the lack of need which explains both the lack of counting ability and the lack of corresponding vocabulary. Moreover, a more recent study suggests that the Pirahã have a basic understanding of geometry despite their language. - - - End Quote [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.htm... [2] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
- irahul 15y agoThat's an interesting and a well-written story. But yet, I find his "I pray for Kim Jong", "I don't want him to meet a tragic end" et al. a bit strange. I don't know, it seems like denial and rationalization. A dictator got his family killed(possibly tortured before killing them), there is nothing he can do about it, so he is trying to find solace by believing he doesn't want Kim Jong Il hurt; and to justify why he thinks so, he is imagining good and innocence, when none exists. He is well aware of things Kim Jong Il did to his family and common masses, and yet he is trying to imagine good in him - I can't find a rational explanation for his line of reasoning.
- rgoddard 15y agoBecause in the end, him meeting a tragic end all to appease the author's anger does no good. While if Kim Jong can open up it would have a larger and more positive impact. Just a matter of trying to break the cycle of violence.
- bostonpete 15y ago> Just a matter of trying to break the cycle of violence. What "cycle of violence"? Hasn't North Korea been run brutally by the same family for 50+ years? That is what needs to be broken, and it's far more likely to come to an end in a violent/tragic downfall than in a peaceful handover of power to his son.
- onemoreact 15y agoIn this case the 'cycle of violence' goes back thousands of years.
- roqetman 15y agoI think that his forgiveness isn't for the dictator, it's for himself.
- jordan0day 15y agoI don't know that it's so hard to believe that someone could get past a base desire for revenge and take a more thoughtful approach? Especially considering that the author seems to be a religious person (he talks about praying daily, his mother wanting him to become a minister, etc.), I think it's completely possible that he could suppress a desire for vengeance and instead express forgiveness.
- joeycfan 15y agoSaddam Hussein murdered most of the people who knew him growing up - one of his biographers figured this out and got out of the country first.
- juiced 15y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr9x6yLb8BY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr9x6yLb8BY
- refurb 15y agoHere is a (long) story about an American who lived in SK who got a chance to go to NK. It's an incredible read and well worth the time. His interactions with NK citizens and his gov't minder are really eye opening. http://www.1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk-trip1.htm~mainframe http://www.1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk-trip1.htm~mainframe I don't know about you guys, but reading his story is really sad. It's like a whole country, with limitless human potential, is developmentally frozen.
- refurb 15y agoProbably one of this best parts of this story was when he visited a shrine to the Great Leader: "The next room contained more gifts from the South, including a Hyundai Grandeur donated by the former chairman of Hyundai (whose family is originally from the North). Mr. Huk asked me if I had ever seen one of these cars during my time in the South. When I said, "sure, my neighbor has one just like it," he gave me another one of his 'you have to be lying' looks. How could such a great gift, a gift implying so much respect, belong to some normal person like my neighbor?"
- rrrazdan 15y agoIts a political post so my politically loaded question should be forgiven. Wouldn't it have been acceptable, if United States had liberated North Korea instead of Iraq?
- sethg 15y agoAt the time the Bush Administration got invasion-happy, it believed that Iraq almost had nuclear weapons. (In retrospect it looks like they weren’t that close, but let’s assume the Administration believed its most pessimistic intelligence reports.) North Korea, on the other hand, already had nuclear weapons, not to mention a conventional arsenal that, as others on this thread point out, can lay waste to the South.
- danec 15y agoWhat if the North Koreans knew that they were starving and that the rest of the world wasn't? What if ten of thousands of balloons descended on North Korea, each carrying small, portable radios, a chocolate bar, and photos of life in the west. Would that change anything?
- gcb 15y agoSo, the dictator forbid people from his high school to join high ranks, but this former professor boast of a dozen former students that are now in high ranks from that same school? pick one.