27 ms·

Sophie In North Korea

356 points by cramforce 14y ago

endianswap 14y ago
Can anyone recommend any good documentaries or other media on the subject of North Korea? This was fascinating! Edit: thanks all :)
- mshafrir 14y ago
  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...
- to3m 14y ago
  `Welcome to North Korea', a documentary well worth watching - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU `North Korean Economy Watch', often has something of interest - http://www.nkeconwatch.com http://www.nkeconwatch.com (also has a comprehensive-looking page of links)
- namastasyai 14y ago
  This is a fun read: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/
  - djhworld 14y ago
    That swallowed up over an hour of my time, absolutely fascinating
- stdbrouw 14y ago
  The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson is a staggeringly good novel about North Korea. Fictional, of course, but well-researched.
- justincormack 14y ago
  This report is really interesting, despite the fact it is just a survey of media use in North Korea... http://audiencescapes.org/sites/default/files/A_Quiet_Opening_FINAL_InterMedia.pdf http://audiencescapes.org/sites/default/files/A_Quiet_Openin...
- ecmendenhall 14y ago
  Two of my favorite pieces of "other media:" This Flickr photostream by "Moravius," who is some sort of humanitarian aid worker in NK. There are lots of photos from outside Pyongyang, which I rarely see elsewhere on the web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/ The Twitter account of James Dresnok, the last living US defector to North Korea: https://twitter.com/JamesDresnok https://twitter.com/JamesDresnok There's a great documentary on Dresnok called "Crossing The Line." His Twitter account is one of the weirdest internet artifacts I've discovered: he only posts every 2-3 months, and the first account he followed was a Kim Jong-il parody.
  - dillona 14y ago
    Are you sure that is a real Twitter account? It only has 96 followers
- Umalu 14y ago
  The documentary "A State of Mind" is terrifically disturbing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_State_of_Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_State_of_Mind). Follow two participants in North Korea's Mass Games as they prepare to put on a show for the Dear Leader. Filled with "only in NK moments."
- jccalhoun 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_documentary_films_about_North_Korea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_documentary_films_about... An interesting one is The Red Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel where two Korean-born Danish-adopted guys travel to North Korea. Because they are of Korean-ethnicity but don't speak Korean or know much about Korea, they get interesting responses from their handlers. One of them is also in a wheelchair and since North Korea allegedly kills all handicapped infants, it leads to some very tense situations.
- joshz 14y ago
  There's a great writeup on reddit about "What North Koreans were told about World War II" [1] with a list of books and couple other media buried in the thread. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/historians_what_do_you_think_the_north_korean/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/histor...
- bluepaper 14y ago
  In the 'other media' category I can highly recommend 'Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea' by Guy Delisle[1] which is a graphic novel detailing his few months working in North Korea for a more serious look and into the lives of those who actually live/have lived in North Korea is 'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick[2] which is a detailed, if not somewhat harrowing insight. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyongyang-A-Journey-North-Korea/dp/0224079905/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyongyang-A-Journey-North-Korea/dp/0... [2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/184708141X/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/18...
  - MBCook 14y ago
    I'd like to second Nothing to Envy, it was a fantastic read.
  - interpol_p 14y ago
    Thirding "Nothing to Envy," it's an incredible read.
- oftenwrong 14y ago
  A few years ago I came across this highly disturbing testimony from a former prisoner. There are no pictures, and no jokes. It gives a glimpse at the dark side of North Korea, and of humanity. It is fucked up and will upset you, so consider yourself warned. http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf&wit_id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf-2-1 http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f...
  - politician 14y ago
    Thanks for the warning; I chose only to read the last few paragraphs, but even that provided enough to extrapolate. While we twiddle about in Silicon Valley building SoLoMo apps, this depraved grinding of humanity continues.
  - seag 14y ago
    Sickening and unreal... I wish there was something we could do...
Spazze 14y ago
That was a great article, but why did it look like crap on Chrome for mobile? You would think Google would have made it easier to read.
- jrockway 14y ago
  It is equally confounding on the desktop. But ultimately, I think it was a bad template choice by the author rather than any particular bug in Google Sites. (Two-column with pictures just doesn't work.)
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Yeah, I couldn't work out how to read it. Column A first? Flip-flop back and forth. Nothing seemed to line up.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      Same here. A one column standard blog format would have been fine. Easy to scale down to mobile, easy to read on the desktop.
- mikeevans 14y ago
  It's not much better on normal Chrome. She says at the top it's because of Google Sites, but it's probably more to do with the two column layout.
travisp 14y ago
This was an interesting read and very much in line with other travelers' reports. However, I do wonder about this part: >Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange. Is it really a good idea to go if you don't have a particular reason (such as this diplomatic trip)? I recall that most human rights groups recommended that tourists not visit Burma until recently so as not to support the regime. For someone like me who would only be going to satisfy my own curiosity, would I not simply be supporting the North Korean regime? I would be giving them money and possibly helping them in their propaganda efforts (see, look, at this American who has come to visit our great country!). I can't think of any ways in which my visit would be good or helpful.
- ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
  On the other hand, isolating an entire people in order to "let the ship sink" sooner and thereby allegedly help them (cf. half-century-old embargo on Cuba) doesn't seem morally sound either. These are tricky issues indeed.
- jcfrei 14y ago
  your contribution to the regime would be marginal at most - so why bother? shedding some light on this weird country is much more important in my opinion.
  - travisp 14y ago
    I agree that your contribution to the government is small, although it's not zero. I assume North Korea wouldn't be allowing Western tourists to come on these trips otherwise; they clearly see an advantage to your visit (unless they are just deluded that Western tourists will be fooled by the propaganda). But, what are the chances that your time there will really shed any more light on North Korea? Encouraging friends to read "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea", for example, or simply reading it or another similar book yourself and sharing your thoughts would arguably shed more light than a brief government managed trip and a blog post. Edit: I'd love to hear why you disagree rather than just downvoting. I've wondered about making this trip myself in the past and this is where I've settled, but would be happy to hear further arguments.
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
Is anyone else confused by the layout of the article? In Chrome on a large monitor(27"@2560x1440) it's kind of difficult to intuit the order of reading.
- cocoflunchy 14y ago
  It's equally difficult on a small (1366x768) monitor...
- 89vision 14y ago
  It was terrible on my phone
- shocks 14y ago
  Very confused. :/
- philwebster 14y ago
  Yes, very disorienting. I zig-zagged my way down the page, unsure of where to focus next. Kind of like the Facebook timeline, but without the little ticks to indicate where each section fit in the order.
  - dexter313 14y ago
    I kinda liked it; Even if you skip something the story is written in a way so it doesn't matter too much.
    - devcpp 14y ago
      It sure is an interesting concept. I didn't really want to know all about North Korea. And somehow, thanks to the layout, I think that I got the general idea in a better way than I would have if it has been one big column. It feels with an approximation algorithm that enables parallel processing to an usually linear task. It saves some time to get the general idea.
      - 14y ago
elisehein 14y ago
I've been lucky enough to have visited NK as well and unsurprisingly everything I read lined up perfectly with my own experience. Most likely tourists from all over the world are always shown the stock tour. Our guides were incredibly insistent that we see everything, too -- that means no suggestions for other activities and definitely no wandering off. One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually doing anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.
- RaphiePS 14y ago
  When I went our tour guides were somewhat lenient. They were happy to take us to the Pyongyang Pizzeria when we asked, but insisted that the Opera would "not be fun for us." Another group we met said their guides would fulfill almost any request, so go figure.
- caf 14y ago
  Friends of mine used to work in a building that also contained the help desk for external customers. One day when a customer delegation was visiting the help desk, they were all brought in and told to sit at the empty desks and pretend to take calls. Their headsets weren't even plugged in.
  - elisehein 14y ago
    It just makes my skin crawl :/
- martinced 14y ago
  Exactly. I "ranted" about it in response to the article. Basically I'm not sure the author understood she realized the "stock tour" and that it was all fake and propaganda. Even the one school people get to visit is fake: the students are actors as you're saying. They take the few genius kids they have and force them to perform the exact same music in front of nearly every delegation that gets there. Once I realized that every single "official" trip there tells the exact same story, my girlfriend and I decided not to go. The drones and spy cameras tell a whole different story than the communist party's propaganda of course. It's really scary what communism did to North Korea...
rince 14y ago
So for those curious - Sophie is Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt (the Eric in the first paragraph).
- endianswap 14y ago
  FYI the original title of the post explained this via parenthetical, but the title was changed by the powers that be to what it is now.
kapsel 14y ago
Not trying to hijack this thread, but I recently spent almost two weeks in the DPRK, and it was one of the most interesting and fascinating trips I ever had. I took about 5000 photos, and uploaded about 500 of them to my Facebook profile. There's descriptions to many of them. If you're interested, check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.428189.754777054&type=1&l=32851643f6 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.... And feel free to ask any questions. I'll recommend visiting their country if you get the chance.
- wavesounds 14y ago
  If a visitor was so willing, is there any possible way of sneaking in any kind of communication equipment that the people there could possibly use? Perhaps a solar powered raspberry pi with wifi and satellite hookup? USB drives full of information that could be dropped off on random doorsteps when nobody was looking? Well trained carrier pigeons to relay messages to the south? Did you see any possible opening for any kind of hacktivist way of helping these people gain access to information?
  - kapsel 14y ago
    Easily. Most in our groups brought some sort of newspapers into the country, they were never confiscated. Our guides would actually ask if it was on to read the newspapers, and our guides knew about what's going on outside of their country. They would know about Assange, Occupy Wall street, Obama etc. I brought an iPad, my laptop and my iPhone - they only took my iPhone when i entered the country - or, actually, they forgot, and I gave it up later on the trip, as I didn't want to get in troubles when leaving. I could easily have left many devices there, with information etc.. In terms of communication devices, not so sure. There's absolutely no wifi in the country, and satellite devices are large, afaik. I was war driving with my iPad in Pyongyang, searching for wifi.. NO wifi was detected, at all. Pretty interesting. I lend my iPad to one of the guides for a week - the guide saw Breaking Bad Season 1 and heard Beatles and U2 :-) and even brought it home at night.
    - kapsel 14y ago
fatbird 14y ago
This book: http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329 http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/06... is an interesting read about NK's system of gulags. Because they practice generational punishment, there are North Koreans who are born into these camps and die there.
ladzoppelin 14y ago
"Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. " I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
sebcat 14y ago
Me and a couple of friends want to go to north korea to jump off some buildings with parachutes, any possibility of this ever happening? We've been in contact with the local travelling guide, and while they did not toss the idea out of the window, it seemed as if it was a pretty stupid idea from their point of view. Can anyone here help with any hookups? We're pretty experienced FWIW...
msoad 14y ago
> [can] we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" Answers: soon, and No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions. This is not rally true, Iran is under same sanctions and you can see Iranian apps on App Store and Play Store.
jnazario 14y ago
a great blog with lots of pics, comments, and insights from her several trips to NorK is "at home in the wasteland": http://www.lindsayfincher.com/ http://www.lindsayfincher.com/
penrod 14y ago
I have a hard time with the light-hearted tone of reports such as this. In one sense the NK propaganda really is comically weird. But in another sense, if you've read 1984 it's all too grimly familiar.
- martinced 14y ago
  +100000. It is comically frightening. It's so fake that you cannot help laugh about it (just look at this thread: fake center call rooms with people pretending to be talking while visitors noticed their headsets aren't even plugged in. Definitely comically frightening). But I also hate the way too rosy tone of the "report". She not reporting on NK. She's reporting on what propaganda wanted her to see.
funkaster 14y ago
It seems like a nice read, but the weird layout distracted me and prevented me from going past the first 3 or 4 paragraphs: I got lost in a mix of two vs one column paragraphs. I tried different browsers with no luck. In any case, I have planned to go to North Korea at some point :)
sunwooz 14y ago
I would like to visit solely because I have family in North Korea, and I would very much like to meet the separated half :(
edwinnathaniel 14y ago
I've been a big fan of a TV show "Departures" (awesome videos by the way) and one time they went to North Korea. You can check out some of the video clips of their trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c (some intro..) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ (elementary school) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc (school) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0 (Arirang Mass Games) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ (War Museum) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k (Kim Il Sung Burial) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18 (trip somewhere)
skurry 14y ago
Very entertaining and interesting article. One peculiar thing I noticed: Did Sophie photoshop this picture of hers? https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home/DSC_0378-1.jpg https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/so...
- jandy 14y ago
  I noticed that and wondered the same thing.
- j79 14y ago
  To be honest, it doesn't appear to be Photoshopped - at least to my eye. Snow is tough to photograph in general (all that bright, reflecting light!) - this just looks like a camera exposing for the foreground and blowing out the rest.
yequalsx 14y ago
Visiting North Korea as a tourist is immoral. North Korea is one of the most brutal, repressive regimes in the history of the world. Inhumane conditions abound for the average North Korean and supporting such a vile regime is disgusting. Tourists who go there ought to be ashamed of themselves.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  The benefit of exposing both sides to one another, in my experience, greatly outweighs the very minor benefits of trade accruing to the regime. Particularly when we get a travelogue such as Sophie Schmit wrote here.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Which country do you live in? Many countries prop up brutal dictatorships for their own advantage. The United States, picking just the easiest example of many, has a long history of supporting oppressive regimes, so presumably every US taxpayer ought to be similarly ashamed. Do you benefit from anything like that?
mathattack 14y ago
This was an eye opening article. It's a strange question, almost science fiction, "What's it like to be in a country that is entirely brainwashed?" It's also a philosophical and ethical question, "Are we morally required to intervene"? The most interesting piece of the article was noting that computer science students have access to our internet, beyond their closed off version. That means A TON. Their minds won't be closed forever. The idealist says, "They won't be closed forever" and there is a realization there. I think it could take longer than people think - their poverty will be a large cause. What will hurt more is the well educated opening their minds. It was a very well written article. And the Eric Schmidt political cartoon was great on many levels. (And yes, every website should be readable on Chrome. It's no longer a one-off browser)
- noonespecial 14y ago
  >"Are we morally required to intervene"? I always land on a much eerier question. How brainwashed am I? And if I am, how would I know?
  - mathattack 14y ago
    Indeed! Why are we at the top of the clear thinking food chain? You are clearly a functional programmer. :-)
martinced 14y ago
Don't forget that it's all fake. I'm not sure the author understands how carefully planned her trip was. What she shows is not North Korea. What she shows is what the propaganda from the communist party leaders wants foreigners to see. The truth is way less rosy (which, yes, makes it really very scary). The hotel is fake. The trafic is fake. The shops are fake. She did realize that they do create products that don't have a market but it's worse than that: they create fake malls (well, actually one fake mall, which every single visitor shall see if he wants to see a mall) just to make believe visitors that they have malls. The entire trip is under supervision and every "delegation" that goes there get to see the exact same things, give or take one or two things. For example the tramway picture: it's in basically every single movie show from foreign "journalist" who got to get there. I say "journalist" because they're not allowed to do anything on their own: they're constantly accompanied by members from the party. Poverty is hidden in basically every street where, of course, you're not allowed to go. I speak several languages so I can watch TV from different countries: it's always the same. At one point me and my girlfriend considered going, so we started watching as much movies as we could about North Korea and we started to realize that all the (totally non-connected) delegations were always doing the exact same visits. After three of them we knew what we were going to see in the fourth one. What about the truth? Well independent reporters have reported famine and people eating roots during cold winters. It's really frightening to realize what communism does to people from both a liberty point of view and a poverty point of view. I'm honestly not sure the author understood what happened to her.
- pyre 14y ago
  | It's really frightening to realize what communism Communism is such a loaded term that it's pretty meaningless at this point. China is also 'communist,' but people aren't eating roots to survive the winters. North Korea is a dictatorship under the guise of communism/socialism.
  - martinced 14y ago
    I realize that communists don't like the fact that Cuba ain't exactly a place where freedom rules king, the fact that North Korea is an utter failure, the fact that the soviet did sent opponents to communism die in Siberia (when it wasn't downright murdering) and the fact that Che Guevara was an homophobic and racist schizophrenic slaughterer... Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty. And it's only since we can write that China is "communist" between quotes that they're starting to escape poverty. And people in small villages in China are still not exactly living on very high standards so...
marco_salvatori 14y ago
I was actually surprised to see Sophie write up her experiences in NK. I'm sure that, being part of diplomatic, friendship mission she had to pick a choose her words and stories, as her write up will be associated with the mission and members to some extent. I have never been to NK, perhaps one day I will have the opportunity. I'm sure such a trip would challenge a lot of my priors about what is normal and not normal and help me to understand more about myself and my own cultural attitudes. For me that is the ultimate point of travel. As an example, I am an American, but I have not lived in the United States for a long time. And each time I go back I find my own country both intensely familiar / strange and both comfortable / uncomfortable at the same time. I remember a couple years ago going back in Dec 2008. Obama had just been elected president and it was the oddest feeling, as I walked about the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed plane to Boston, to see Obama's face on T-shirts, to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newsweek?), to see Obama's wife on the cover of the ladies magazines. I suppose all the Obama sign-age didn't seem at all strange to the natives but then again I suppose, pictures of the Great Leader don't seem out of place to the natives in NK either. I could tell you more stories about the strangeness of seeing flags everywhere months after 9-11 or the horror of the rhetoric that is casually accepted by the audiences during national conventions. But what I am trying to get at is that political and nationalistic symbols exist in every country and the trick is not to do the easy work and point out its baseness or ridicule it when we see it some place else. The trick is is to see what Jung would call our own "shadow"; do the hard work; see where we have let our own institutions manipulate our thoughts and feelings. When we can do that then one has had a successful trip.
- miked 14y ago
  to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newweek?) That's what I love about living in America rather than North Korea: we don't have a news media working in lockstep to proclaim the greatness of the Dear Leader.
  - DigitalJack 14y ago
    Was that sarcasm?
naz 14y ago
> When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then. They weren't lying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning#Korean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning#Korean
refurb 14y ago
For another fantastic travelogue about North Korea, I suggest http://www.1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm http://www.1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm It's from 2002, so things were quite different back then, but the dialogue the traveler gets into with his guide is very interesting! 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? This was obviously a car reserved for the elite, capitalist oppressors, not some common car for the masses. When I told him I wished the chairman had given away a lot more so there'd be less traffic in the South he got fed up with my obvious lies, gave me a disgusted look and moved on to talk to someone else.
justinhj 14y ago
This is also very interesting. An animator/manager goes to N.Korea to oversee outsourcing and makes a graphic novel of his experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(comics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(comics)
TeMPOraL 14y ago
Every time I read about North Korea, part of me keeps wondering: How many international treaties would I break if I were to sneak in some surveillance tech in there? Just a small robot that looks like mouse and shoots photos, or a small UAV deployed on the South Korean side of the border? Just to get out to the world some photos of how real NK looks like. I wonder what kind of consequences would such an attempt have and why no one seemed to have tried so far.
- djhworld 14y ago
  I don't think flying a UAV from the south side of the border would be the wisest move, considering the tension between the two countries. You might set off a diplomatic incident.
- lotu 14y ago
  If you tried flying a UAV in to North Korea I would expect the US and South Korean forces stationed on the border to be very upset. I wouldn't be surprised if they shot your drone down as a precaution.
humanspecies 14y ago
Whenever one of these "inside NK" articles show up, I am more impressed by the arrogance and the ignorance of the commenters than I am by the stories. "OMG they're brainwashed, do we morally have an obligation to intervene" says one smug commenter. Well, my friend, look at Times Square. What is it? It's a fucking AD clusterfuck. Companies, ads, fake artificial and as plastic as it gets. And yet, no ads on NK's streets... That is so refreshing to me. What is so inviting about capitalism? Go to Reddit and read the first page: booze, artificial and superficial crap and social problems all over the place. People have iphones and fancy cars but they're socially sick, alone... It may be terrible in NK, but who are you to be criticizing them? Just because you have iphones and an Audi in your garage, what we're seeing today is an ever more lonely society whose only escapes are booze, pot and superficial pleasures like buying something and showing a photo of it online. These comments here...the top one says "it's all fake". WOW good thing it's not as real as silicon tits or mcdonalds sandwich photos! Those are real! And your TV ads, and your promissed dream, those are all real too! Nevermind that you bailed out banks who robbed you and you are now getting sued by those banks! THAT is reality folks, poor North Koreans who live under a terrible fake regime that fools all of them! How about those North Korean jails eh? Horrible gulags! Nevermind that the world's largest carcerary population is in the United States of America. And the death penalty? It must be terrible to live under a regime that straps people to machines that kill them in barbaric ways? Oh my God, NK is the evil empire! How about those children faking studies?? That's awful! It's better to live in a country where children don't even fake it! Crack, pot and god awful music prevail in our schools, our children are grabbing machine guns to kill each other and you find it funny to mock those poor North Koreans! I feel sick to my stomach to see where our society is and how stupid and ignorant and brainwashed YOU are to accept the immoral, indecent and corrupt state YOU live under and then go on to criticize other countries whose people are just as honest and decent as you. Their regime is failed and so is ours - you are no better than them, never forget that. You have an iphone, they don't, that is all you're better at.
- nshepperd 14y ago
  > You have an iphone, they don't Don't forget the food, internet, health care, electricity, education, and freedom of speech. What have the romans ever done for us, eh?
znowi 14y ago
Jesus. Each time when I read accounts of North Korean travels, I almost feel ache in my stomach picturing the eerie atmosphere, and then a sense of relief and appreciation of my immensely comfortable life in comparison. On the other hand, "ignorance is bliss" as they say. And without any reference framework in sight, they may actually be happy...
jrogers65 14y ago
I try to refrain from making emotional political statements on this site but I cannot resist. > Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange. This is essentially advocating a visit to a huge concentration camp which is still in operation. The abuses that go on in this country are beyond belief. This whole article brings about a feeling of sickness in me.
agiamas 14y ago
Amazing story... spoiler alert, as these quotes were legendary: "Not that we were allowed to talk to them, but riddle me this: How do you explain to someone that she's a YouTube sensation if she's never heard of the Internet?" - Can you help us with e-Settlement so that we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" - No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions.
rivd 14y ago
another rare photoset has been posted in a older hn-thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223) the original link doesnt work anymore, but i found the same photo's on a russian site http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/
sakopov 14y ago
Here is a set of articles from 2006 written by the founder of one of the leading design studios in Russia - artlebedev.ru. The read is very interesting, but unfortunately only available in Russian. Part 1 (general): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ Part 2 (military) : http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/ Part 3 (culture): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ Part 4 (Roads & transport): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/
jerser 14y ago
What mostly strikes me about this post is how condescending she is about the people there. It's not only about the regime, but here post is basically belittling for the people there. A gew gems of the post: "How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me. " Like every Korean over there wants to eat Americans for breakfast, sigh. Yes, their official pollicy is very anti-American, but has it every stroke her mind that they are also people? And that they can make the distinction between "the American people" and their government. Just as much as I hope that she can make a difference between a person and their leaders. "When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then." This one kinda says everything about the author. "No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions." All in all, whatever she writes down is an accurate observation, but I would have wanted the tone to be much different. No I mostly read this as a rant from someone who believes is superior to them. I would have liked it more if it was written from a more neutral point of view. But hey, it's the internet, ranting is what has to be done :-) For what it is worth, I've been there a bit over a year ago and what she has seen (besides the official visits) is more or less the same as I have seen. So yes it is all fake of course. But I would definitely visit it again to see other parts of the country.

356 points by cramforce 14y ago

Can anyone recommend any good documentaries or other media on the subject of North Korea? This was fascinating! Edit: thanks all :)

mshafrir 14y ago
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...
to3m 14y ago
`Welcome to North Korea', a documentary well worth watching - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6E3cShcVU `North Korean Economy Watch', often has something of interest - http://www.nkeconwatch.com http://www.nkeconwatch.com (also has a comprehensive-looking page of links)
namastasyai 14y ago
This is a fun read: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/
- djhworld 14y ago
  That swallowed up over an hour of my time, absolutely fascinating
stdbrouw 14y ago
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson is a staggeringly good novel about North Korea. Fictional, of course, but well-researched.
justincormack 14y ago
This report is really interesting, despite the fact it is just a survey of media use in North Korea... http://audiencescapes.org/sites/default/files/A_Quiet_Opening_FINAL_InterMedia.pdf http://audiencescapes.org/sites/default/files/A_Quiet_Openin...
ecmendenhall 14y ago
Two of my favorite pieces of "other media:" This Flickr photostream by "Moravius," who is some sort of humanitarian aid worker in NK. There are lots of photos from outside Pyongyang, which I rarely see elsewhere on the web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/ The Twitter account of James Dresnok, the last living US defector to North Korea: https://twitter.com/JamesDresnok https://twitter.com/JamesDresnok There's a great documentary on Dresnok called "Crossing The Line." His Twitter account is one of the weirdest internet artifacts I've discovered: he only posts every 2-3 months, and the first account he followed was a Kim Jong-il parody.
- dillona 14y ago
  Are you sure that is a real Twitter account? It only has 96 followers
Umalu 14y ago
The documentary "A State of Mind" is terrifically disturbing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_State_of_Mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_State_of_Mind). Follow two participants in North Korea's Mass Games as they prepare to put on a show for the Dear Leader. Filled with "only in NK moments."
jccalhoun 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_documentary_films_about_North_Korea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_documentary_films_about... An interesting one is The Red Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel where two Korean-born Danish-adopted guys travel to North Korea. Because they are of Korean-ethnicity but don't speak Korean or know much about Korea, they get interesting responses from their handlers. One of them is also in a wheelchair and since North Korea allegedly kills all handicapped infants, it leads to some very tense situations.
joshz 14y ago
There's a great writeup on reddit about "What North Koreans were told about World War II" [1] with a list of books and couple other media buried in the thread. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/historians_what_do_you_think_the_north_korean/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/histor...
bluepaper 14y ago
In the 'other media' category I can highly recommend 'Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea' by Guy Delisle[1] which is a graphic novel detailing his few months working in North Korea for a more serious look and into the lives of those who actually live/have lived in North Korea is 'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick[2] which is a detailed, if not somewhat harrowing insight. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyongyang-A-Journey-North-Korea/dp/0224079905/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyongyang-A-Journey-North-Korea/dp/0... [2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/184708141X/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/18...
- MBCook 14y ago
  I'd like to second Nothing to Envy, it was a fantastic read.
- interpol_p 14y ago
  Thirding "Nothing to Envy," it's an incredible read.
oftenwrong 14y ago
A few years ago I came across this highly disturbing testimony from a former prisoner. There are no pictures, and no jokes. It gives a glimpse at the dark side of North Korea, and of humanity. It is fucked up and will upset you, so consider yourself warned. http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf&wit_id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf-2-1 http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f...
- politician 14y ago
  Thanks for the warning; I chose only to read the last few paragraphs, but even that provided enough to extrapolate. While we twiddle about in Silicon Valley building SoLoMo apps, this depraved grinding of humanity continues.
- seag 14y ago
  Sickening and unreal... I wish there was something we could do...

Spazze 14y ago

That was a great article, but why did it look like crap on Chrome for mobile? You would think Google would have made it easier to read.

jrockway 14y ago
It is equally confounding on the desktop. But ultimately, I think it was a bad template choice by the author rather than any particular bug in Google Sites. (Two-column with pictures just doesn't work.)
- petercooper 14y ago
  Yeah, I couldn't work out how to read it. Column A first? Flip-flop back and forth. Nothing seemed to line up.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Same here. A one column standard blog format would have been fine. Easy to scale down to mobile, easy to read on the desktop.
mikeevans 14y ago
It's not much better on normal Chrome. She says at the top it's because of Google Sites, but it's probably more to do with the two column layout.

travisp 14y ago

This was an interesting read and very much in line with other travelers' reports. However, I do wonder about this part: >Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange. Is it really a good idea to go if you don't have a particular reason (such as this diplomatic trip)? I recall that most human rights groups recommended that tourists not visit Burma until recently so as not to support the regime. For someone like me who would only be going to satisfy my own curiosity, would I not simply be supporting the North Korean regime? I would be giving them money and possibly helping them in their propaganda efforts (see, look, at this American who has come to visit our great country!). I can't think of any ways in which my visit would be good or helpful.

ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
On the other hand, isolating an entire people in order to "let the ship sink" sooner and thereby allegedly help them (cf. half-century-old embargo on Cuba) doesn't seem morally sound either. These are tricky issues indeed.
jcfrei 14y ago
your contribution to the regime would be marginal at most - so why bother? shedding some light on this weird country is much more important in my opinion.
- travisp 14y ago
  I agree that your contribution to the government is small, although it's not zero. I assume North Korea wouldn't be allowing Western tourists to come on these trips otherwise; they clearly see an advantage to your visit (unless they are just deluded that Western tourists will be fooled by the propaganda). But, what are the chances that your time there will really shed any more light on North Korea? Encouraging friends to read "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea", for example, or simply reading it or another similar book yourself and sharing your thoughts would arguably shed more light than a brief government managed trip and a blog post. Edit: I'd love to hear why you disagree rather than just downvoting. I've wondered about making this trip myself in the past and this is where I've settled, but would be happy to hear further arguments.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago

Is anyone else confused by the layout of the article? In Chrome on a large monitor(27"@2560x1440) it's kind of difficult to intuit the order of reading.

cocoflunchy 14y ago
It's equally difficult on a small (1366x768) monitor...
89vision 14y ago
It was terrible on my phone
shocks 14y ago
Very confused. :/
philwebster 14y ago
Yes, very disorienting. I zig-zagged my way down the page, unsure of where to focus next. Kind of like the Facebook timeline, but without the little ticks to indicate where each section fit in the order.
- dexter313 14y ago
  I kinda liked it; Even if you skip something the story is written in a way so it doesn't matter too much.
  - devcpp 14y ago
    It sure is an interesting concept. I didn't really want to know all about North Korea. And somehow, thanks to the layout, I think that I got the general idea in a better way than I would have if it has been one big column. It feels with an approximation algorithm that enables parallel processing to an usually linear task. It saves some time to get the general idea.
    - 14y ago

elisehein 14y ago

I've been lucky enough to have visited NK as well and unsurprisingly everything I read lined up perfectly with my own experience. Most likely tourists from all over the world are always shown the stock tour. Our guides were incredibly insistent that we see everything, too -- that means no suggestions for other activities and definitely no wandering off. One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually doing anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.

RaphiePS 14y ago
When I went our tour guides were somewhat lenient. They were happy to take us to the Pyongyang Pizzeria when we asked, but insisted that the Opera would "not be fun for us." Another group we met said their guides would fulfill almost any request, so go figure.
caf 14y ago
Friends of mine used to work in a building that also contained the help desk for external customers. One day when a customer delegation was visiting the help desk, they were all brought in and told to sit at the empty desks and pretend to take calls. Their headsets weren't even plugged in.
- elisehein 14y ago
  It just makes my skin crawl :/
martinced 14y ago
Exactly. I "ranted" about it in response to the article. Basically I'm not sure the author understood she realized the "stock tour" and that it was all fake and propaganda. Even the one school people get to visit is fake: the students are actors as you're saying. They take the few genius kids they have and force them to perform the exact same music in front of nearly every delegation that gets there. Once I realized that every single "official" trip there tells the exact same story, my girlfriend and I decided not to go. The drones and spy cameras tell a whole different story than the communist party's propaganda of course. It's really scary what communism did to North Korea...

rince 14y ago

So for those curious - Sophie is Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt (the Eric in the first paragraph).

endianswap 14y ago
FYI the original title of the post explained this via parenthetical, but the title was changed by the powers that be to what it is now.

kapsel 14y ago

Not trying to hijack this thread, but I recently spent almost two weeks in the DPRK, and it was one of the most interesting and fascinating trips I ever had. I took about 5000 photos, and uploaded about 500 of them to my Facebook profile. There's descriptions to many of them. If you're interested, check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.428189.754777054&type=1&l=32851643f6 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.... And feel free to ask any questions. I'll recommend visiting their country if you get the chance.

wavesounds 14y ago
If a visitor was so willing, is there any possible way of sneaking in any kind of communication equipment that the people there could possibly use? Perhaps a solar powered raspberry pi with wifi and satellite hookup? USB drives full of information that could be dropped off on random doorsteps when nobody was looking? Well trained carrier pigeons to relay messages to the south? Did you see any possible opening for any kind of hacktivist way of helping these people gain access to information?
- kapsel 14y ago
  Easily. Most in our groups brought some sort of newspapers into the country, they were never confiscated. Our guides would actually ask if it was on to read the newspapers, and our guides knew about what's going on outside of their country. They would know about Assange, Occupy Wall street, Obama etc. I brought an iPad, my laptop and my iPhone - they only took my iPhone when i entered the country - or, actually, they forgot, and I gave it up later on the trip, as I didn't want to get in troubles when leaving. I could easily have left many devices there, with information etc.. In terms of communication devices, not so sure. There's absolutely no wifi in the country, and satellite devices are large, afaik. I was war driving with my iPad in Pyongyang, searching for wifi.. NO wifi was detected, at all. Pretty interesting. I lend my iPad to one of the guides for a week - the guide saw Breaking Bad Season 1 and heard Beatles and U2 :-) and even brought it home at night.
  - kapsel 14y ago

fatbird 14y ago

This book: http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329 http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/06... is an interesting read about NK's system of gulags. Because they practice generational punishment, there are North Koreans who are born into these camps and die there.

ladzoppelin 14y ago

"Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. " I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.

deleted 14y ago
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sebcat 14y ago

Me and a couple of friends want to go to north korea to jump off some buildings with parachutes, any possibility of this ever happening? We've been in contact with the local travelling guide, and while they did not toss the idea out of the window, it seemed as if it was a pretty stupid idea from their point of view. Can anyone here help with any hookups? We're pretty experienced FWIW...

msoad 14y ago

> [can] we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" Answers: soon, and No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions. This is not rally true, Iran is under same sanctions and you can see Iranian apps on App Store and Play Store.

jnazario 14y ago

a great blog with lots of pics, comments, and insights from her several trips to NorK is "at home in the wasteland": http://www.lindsayfincher.com/ http://www.lindsayfincher.com/

penrod 14y ago

I have a hard time with the light-hearted tone of reports such as this. In one sense the NK propaganda really is comically weird. But in another sense, if you've read 1984 it's all too grimly familiar.

martinced 14y ago
+100000. It is comically frightening. It's so fake that you cannot help laugh about it (just look at this thread: fake center call rooms with people pretending to be talking while visitors noticed their headsets aren't even plugged in. Definitely comically frightening). But I also hate the way too rosy tone of the "report". She not reporting on NK. She's reporting on what propaganda wanted her to see.

funkaster 14y ago

It seems like a nice read, but the weird layout distracted me and prevented me from going past the first 3 or 4 paragraphs: I got lost in a mix of two vs one column paragraphs. I tried different browsers with no luck. In any case, I have planned to go to North Korea at some point :)

sunwooz 14y ago

I would like to visit solely because I have family in North Korea, and I would very much like to meet the separated half :(

edwinnathaniel 14y ago

I've been a big fan of a TV show "Departures" (awesome videos by the way) and one time they went to North Korea. You can check out some of the video clips of their trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c (some intro..) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ (elementary school) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc (school) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0 (Arirang Mass Games) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ (War Museum) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k (Kim Il Sung Burial) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18 (trip somewhere)

skurry 14y ago

Very entertaining and interesting article. One peculiar thing I noticed: Did Sophie photoshop this picture of hers? https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home/DSC_0378-1.jpg https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/so...

jandy 14y ago
I noticed that and wondered the same thing.
j79 14y ago
To be honest, it doesn't appear to be Photoshopped - at least to my eye. Snow is tough to photograph in general (all that bright, reflecting light!) - this just looks like a camera exposing for the foreground and blowing out the rest.

yequalsx 14y ago

Visiting North Korea as a tourist is immoral. North Korea is one of the most brutal, repressive regimes in the history of the world. Inhumane conditions abound for the average North Korean and supporting such a vile regime is disgusting. Tourists who go there ought to be ashamed of themselves.

dredmorbius 14y ago
The benefit of exposing both sides to one another, in my experience, greatly outweighs the very minor benefits of trade accruing to the regime. Particularly when we get a travelogue such as Sophie Schmit wrote here.
EliRivers 14y ago
Which country do you live in? Many countries prop up brutal dictatorships for their own advantage. The United States, picking just the easiest example of many, has a long history of supporting oppressive regimes, so presumably every US taxpayer ought to be similarly ashamed. Do you benefit from anything like that?

mathattack 14y ago

This was an eye opening article. It's a strange question, almost science fiction, "What's it like to be in a country that is entirely brainwashed?" It's also a philosophical and ethical question, "Are we morally required to intervene"? The most interesting piece of the article was noting that computer science students have access to our internet, beyond their closed off version. That means A TON. Their minds won't be closed forever. The idealist says, "They won't be closed forever" and there is a realization there. I think it could take longer than people think - their poverty will be a large cause. What will hurt more is the well educated opening their minds. It was a very well written article. And the Eric Schmidt political cartoon was great on many levels. (And yes, every website should be readable on Chrome. It's no longer a one-off browser)

noonespecial 14y ago
>"Are we morally required to intervene"? I always land on a much eerier question. How brainwashed am I? And if I am, how would I know?
- mathattack 14y ago
  Indeed! Why are we at the top of the clear thinking food chain? You are clearly a functional programmer. :-)

martinced 14y ago

Don't forget that it's all fake. I'm not sure the author understands how carefully planned her trip was. What she shows is not North Korea. What she shows is what the propaganda from the communist party leaders wants foreigners to see. The truth is way less rosy (which, yes, makes it really very scary). The hotel is fake. The trafic is fake. The shops are fake. She did realize that they do create products that don't have a market but it's worse than that: they create fake malls (well, actually one fake mall, which every single visitor shall see if he wants to see a mall) just to make believe visitors that they have malls. The entire trip is under supervision and every "delegation" that goes there get to see the exact same things, give or take one or two things. For example the tramway picture: it's in basically every single movie show from foreign "journalist" who got to get there. I say "journalist" because they're not allowed to do anything on their own: they're constantly accompanied by members from the party. Poverty is hidden in basically every street where, of course, you're not allowed to go. I speak several languages so I can watch TV from different countries: it's always the same. At one point me and my girlfriend considered going, so we started watching as much movies as we could about North Korea and we started to realize that all the (totally non-connected) delegations were always doing the exact same visits. After three of them we knew what we were going to see in the fourth one. What about the truth? Well independent reporters have reported famine and people eating roots during cold winters. It's really frightening to realize what communism does to people from both a liberty point of view and a poverty point of view. I'm honestly not sure the author understood what happened to her.

pyre 14y ago
| It's really frightening to realize what communism Communism is such a loaded term that it's pretty meaningless at this point. China is also 'communist,' but people aren't eating roots to survive the winters. North Korea is a dictatorship under the guise of communism/socialism.
- martinced 14y ago
  I realize that communists don't like the fact that Cuba ain't exactly a place where freedom rules king, the fact that North Korea is an utter failure, the fact that the soviet did sent opponents to communism die in Siberia (when it wasn't downright murdering) and the fact that Che Guevara was an homophobic and racist schizophrenic slaughterer... Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty. And it's only since we can write that China is "communist" between quotes that they're starting to escape poverty. And people in small villages in China are still not exactly living on very high standards so...

marco_salvatori 14y ago

I was actually surprised to see Sophie write up her experiences in NK. I'm sure that, being part of diplomatic, friendship mission she had to pick a choose her words and stories, as her write up will be associated with the mission and members to some extent. I have never been to NK, perhaps one day I will have the opportunity. I'm sure such a trip would challenge a lot of my priors about what is normal and not normal and help me to understand more about myself and my own cultural attitudes. For me that is the ultimate point of travel. As an example, I am an American, but I have not lived in the United States for a long time. And each time I go back I find my own country both intensely familiar / strange and both comfortable / uncomfortable at the same time. I remember a couple years ago going back in Dec 2008. Obama had just been elected president and it was the oddest feeling, as I walked about the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed plane to Boston, to see Obama's face on T-shirts, to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newsweek?), to see Obama's wife on the cover of the ladies magazines. I suppose all the Obama sign-age didn't seem at all strange to the natives but then again I suppose, pictures of the Great Leader don't seem out of place to the natives in NK either. I could tell you more stories about the strangeness of seeing flags everywhere months after 9-11 or the horror of the rhetoric that is casually accepted by the audiences during national conventions. But what I am trying to get at is that political and nationalistic symbols exist in every country and the trick is not to do the easy work and point out its baseness or ridicule it when we see it some place else. The trick is is to see what Jung would call our own "shadow"; do the hard work; see where we have let our own institutions manipulate our thoughts and feelings. When we can do that then one has had a successful trip.

miked 14y ago
to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newweek?) That's what I love about living in America rather than North Korea: we don't have a news media working in lockstep to proclaim the greatness of the Dear Leader.
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  Was that sarcasm?

naz 14y ago

> When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then. They weren't lying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning#Korean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning#Korean

refurb 14y ago

For another fantastic travelogue about North Korea, I suggest http://www.1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm http://www.1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm It's from 2002, so things were quite different back then, but the dialogue the traveler gets into with his guide is very interesting! 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? This was obviously a car reserved for the elite, capitalist oppressors, not some common car for the masses. When I told him I wished the chairman had given away a lot more so there'd be less traffic in the South he got fed up with my obvious lies, gave me a disgusted look and moved on to talk to someone else.

justinhj 14y ago

This is also very interesting. An animator/manager goes to N.Korea to oversee outsourcing and makes a graphic novel of his experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(comics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(comics)

TeMPOraL 14y ago

Every time I read about North Korea, part of me keeps wondering: How many international treaties would I break if I were to sneak in some surveillance tech in there? Just a small robot that looks like mouse and shoots photos, or a small UAV deployed on the South Korean side of the border? Just to get out to the world some photos of how real NK looks like. I wonder what kind of consequences would such an attempt have and why no one seemed to have tried so far.

djhworld 14y ago
I don't think flying a UAV from the south side of the border would be the wisest move, considering the tension between the two countries. You might set off a diplomatic incident.
lotu 14y ago
If you tried flying a UAV in to North Korea I would expect the US and South Korean forces stationed on the border to be very upset. I wouldn't be surprised if they shot your drone down as a precaution.

humanspecies 14y ago

Whenever one of these "inside NK" articles show up, I am more impressed by the arrogance and the ignorance of the commenters than I am by the stories. "OMG they're brainwashed, do we morally have an obligation to intervene" says one smug commenter. Well, my friend, look at Times Square. What is it? It's a fucking AD clusterfuck. Companies, ads, fake artificial and as plastic as it gets. And yet, no ads on NK's streets... That is so refreshing to me. What is so inviting about capitalism? Go to Reddit and read the first page: booze, artificial and superficial crap and social problems all over the place. People have iphones and fancy cars but they're socially sick, alone... It may be terrible in NK, but who are you to be criticizing them? Just because you have iphones and an Audi in your garage, what we're seeing today is an ever more lonely society whose only escapes are booze, pot and superficial pleasures like buying something and showing a photo of it online. These comments here...the top one says "it's all fake". WOW good thing it's not as real as silicon tits or mcdonalds sandwich photos! Those are real! And your TV ads, and your promissed dream, those are all real too! Nevermind that you bailed out banks who robbed you and you are now getting sued by those banks! THAT is reality folks, poor North Koreans who live under a terrible fake regime that fools all of them! How about those North Korean jails eh? Horrible gulags! Nevermind that the world's largest carcerary population is in the United States of America. And the death penalty? It must be terrible to live under a regime that straps people to machines that kill them in barbaric ways? Oh my God, NK is the evil empire! How about those children faking studies?? That's awful! It's better to live in a country where children don't even fake it! Crack, pot and god awful music prevail in our schools, our children are grabbing machine guns to kill each other and you find it funny to mock those poor North Koreans! I feel sick to my stomach to see where our society is and how stupid and ignorant and brainwashed YOU are to accept the immoral, indecent and corrupt state YOU live under and then go on to criticize other countries whose people are just as honest and decent as you. Their regime is failed and so is ours - you are no better than them, never forget that. You have an iphone, they don't, that is all you're better at.

nshepperd 14y ago
> You have an iphone, they don't Don't forget the food, internet, health care, electricity, education, and freedom of speech. What have the romans ever done for us, eh?

znowi 14y ago

Jesus. Each time when I read accounts of North Korean travels, I almost feel ache in my stomach picturing the eerie atmosphere, and then a sense of relief and appreciation of my immensely comfortable life in comparison. On the other hand, "ignorance is bliss" as they say. And without any reference framework in sight, they may actually be happy...

jrogers65 14y ago

I try to refrain from making emotional political statements on this site but I cannot resist. > Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange. This is essentially advocating a visit to a huge concentration camp which is still in operation. The abuses that go on in this country are beyond belief. This whole article brings about a feeling of sickness in me.

agiamas 14y ago

Amazing story... spoiler alert, as these quotes were legendary: "Not that we were allowed to talk to them, but riddle me this: How do you explain to someone that she's a YouTube sensation if she's never heard of the Internet?" - Can you help us with e-Settlement so that we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" - No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions.

rivd 14y ago

another rare photoset has been posted in a older hn-thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223) the original link doesnt work anymore, but i found the same photo's on a russian site http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/

sakopov 14y ago

Here is a set of articles from 2006 written by the founder of one of the leading design studios in Russia - artlebedev.ru. The read is very interesting, but unfortunately only available in Russian. Part 1 (general): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ Part 2 (military) : http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/ Part 3 (culture): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ Part 4 (Roads & transport): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/

jerser 14y ago

What mostly strikes me about this post is how condescending she is about the people there. It's not only about the regime, but here post is basically belittling for the people there. A gew gems of the post: "How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me. " Like every Korean over there wants to eat Americans for breakfast, sigh. Yes, their official pollicy is very anti-American, but has it every stroke her mind that they are also people? And that they can make the distinction between "the American people" and their government. Just as much as I hope that she can make a difference between a person and their leaders. "When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then." This one kinda says everything about the author. "No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions." All in all, whatever she writes down is an accurate observation, but I would have wanted the tone to be much different. No I mostly read this as a rant from someone who believes is superior to them. I would have liked it more if it was written from a more neutral point of view. But hey, it's the internet, ranting is what has to be done :-) For what it is worth, I've been there a bit over a year ago and what she has seen (besides the official visits) is more or less the same as I have seen. So yes it is all fake of course. But I would definitely visit it again to see other parts of the country.