Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 123 posts

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#51

Post by opportune »

robertlagrant wrote: post #46
kolinko wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing like any other society. I lived through Communist Poland. Comfortable life for officials meant that they could use stores with stuff from the west (to buy Levi's jeans, Marlboro cigarettes, or perhaps even a walkman - you can google Pewex to read about these stores). Many of them had also homes. Not as in villas, but as in plain homes that you see in american suburbs. One of the country leaders in 1950s built…

This is really interesting. I always balk against people talking about inequality with this sort of thing in mind: the problem isn't inequality, it's how good the low and average standards of living are, and whether they're improving. It requires no talent, only power, to take people's stuff and redistribute it. It requires talent and effort to create new things that raise the bar for everyone, and just as much to ma…

Humans are social creatures with an innate sense of “status”. Absolute material inequality is only one form of inequality.

You can feed, clothe, and give iPhones to the very poor but if they are at the bottom of a very deep social hierarchy with no hope to climb out of it, that inequality is still going to cause a lot of problems. People might turn to a life of crime for lack of better options, or participate into a violent machismo culture in an attempt to salvage their masculinity/status as a man.

Of course, the fallacy of every attempt at socialism is that “abolishing class” simply replaces the capitalist social hierarchy with a new hierarchy based on position within the Party or blessed sectors like the military, science, or intelligence, complete with large differences in material living standards. However, a greatly reduced disparity in living standards and material conditions does have positive social effects IMO. Consider that deaths of despair, poverty, and desperation are much higher under the Russian Federation than the USSR. I’m not saying that communism or socialism are good by any means, but I think there are real net benefits to low inequality sometimes even if they come at the expense of overall lower living standards.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#52

Post by whatshisface »

l3mure wrote: post #49
waffleiron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author is also living in South Korea which by law bans you to speak positively about North Korea. Not to say NK isn’t bad, but you are unable to have an honest and balanced discussion about it in the media while you live in SK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_(South...

Indeed, there actually was a conviction of an elderly man via the NSA within the past few weeks. 14 months in jail for a poem. > In this latest case, Lee Yoon-seop was accused of submitting a poem in 2016 to the Uriminzokkiri website, which is a state-controlled North Korean website. Submitted as part of a competition run by the website back in 2016, it praised North Korea, stating that “if the two Koreas were united…

Americans that want exceptions to freedom of speech must have no idea what countries that have them use them for.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#53

Post by layer8 »

the-smug-one wrote: post #33
waffleiron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author is also living in South Korea which by law bans you to speak positively about North Korea. Not to say NK isn’t bad, but you are unable to have an honest and balanced discussion about it in the media while you live in SK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_(South...

Yeah, but he could also just not have said anything, right?

Username checks out.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#54

Post by gerdesj »

duxup wrote: post #17
borbtactics wrote: post #14

This story reminds me that education is a privilege and I'm probably not enjoying it as much as I should.

I was a horrible college student when I was younger. For a variety of reasons. I quit school, got lucky, and fell into a good tech career. Many many years later after age 40 I was laid off, wanted a new career path / job, I took a few classes and eventually a bootcamp and changed careers. I was really nervous as far as how it would all play out knowing how terrible I was previously. It was completely different. The i…

The thing about experience and hindsight are clearly stated within their names. You don't accumulate either without being time served.

You may have some times where you actually decided to "carpe diem" and when you look back on those days, you will realise you made the best of things. As you get older, hopefully those positive experiences gradually accumulate, rather than being drowned out by negative experiences, which sadly make themselves up.

Sadly, bits tend to fall off or sag as we get older. It is the way of things. However, with luck your mind stays reasonably sharp for longer than the rest of you!

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#55

Post by ldc_or_dmd »

WalterBright wrote: post #40
duxup wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a horrible college student when I was younger. For a variety of reasons. I quit school, got lucky, and fell into a good tech career. Many many years later after age 40 I was laid off, wanted a new career path / job, I took a few classes and eventually a bootcamp and changed careers. I was really nervous as far as how it would all play out knowing how terrible I was previously. It was completely different. The i…

A friend of mine dropped out of Caltech due to bad grades. I ran into him a decade later, and he said he'd recently graduated from Caltech, having gone back and gotten A's. I asked him what changed, did you get smarter? He laughed, and said no, this time I was willing to work.

Did he have to reapply? Acceptance rates have gone pretty steadily down at most worthwhile colleges since the 1970s. It would be surprising if a candidate got more attractive to a school as time went on.

I'm kind of curious about the process of applying to Caltech overall, as someone who didn't have the opportunity to apply to anywhere at 18, but would very much like to when I get the chance. If a person wants to get into an elite university like it or MIT, what should they optimize for? I've known people with near-perfect SAT scores that didn't get into either. Is it mostly luck-based, after what few obvious things you can control?

Sorry, I know this is probably the most frequently asked question you get any time you bring up your alma mater.

Thanks for making D, by the way!

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#56

Post by gwervc »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #39
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's published, 跳べない蛙, you can buy it on Amazon or wherever. But in Japanese.

Wonder if someone will pick this up and publish it in English.

Negociating with a Japanese publishing house is probably 3 times the effort of translating the text itself. I'm interested in the book myself and I can read some Japanese (and know people more proficient than me who could translate it), but that's a no go because of intellectual property.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#57

Post by VoodooJuJu »

borbtactics wrote: post #14

This story reminds me that education is a privilege and I'm probably not enjoying it as much as I should.

Part of the reason Western countries are so successful is precisely because we don't treat it as a privilege, but as a given.

So appreciate it as a privilege where it's not a given, like in shithole countries, but please do treat it as something that should be a given, that's what separates shitholes from beacons of light and truth, i.e. the West.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#58

Post by hodgesrm »

WalterBright wrote: post #40
duxup wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a horrible college student when I was younger. For a variety of reasons. I quit school, got lucky, and fell into a good tech career. Many many years later after age 40 I was laid off, wanted a new career path / job, I took a few classes and eventually a bootcamp and changed careers. I was really nervous as far as how it would all play out knowing how terrible I was previously. It was completely different. The i…

A friend of mine dropped out of Caltech due to bad grades. I ran into him a decade later, and he said he'd recently graduated from Caltech, having gone back and gotten A's. I asked him what changed, did you get smarter? He laughed, and said no, this time I was willing to work.

Doing the homework and showing up to class do wonders for academic performance. Many people (me included) have learned this the hard way.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#59

Post by credit_guy »

borbtactics wrote: post #14

This story reminds me that education is a privilege and I'm probably not enjoying it as much as I should.

> is a privilege

Why are you watering down the word "privilege"? Historically privilege was an exemption from taxes due to the fact that one of your ancestors helped some king in a war.

How exactly is education a privilege? At least in the US, everyone has access to public education. My kids go to public school, and while I can't say their education is perfect, it's not that bad either. You could probably say that private education is a privilege, but education in general? Why?

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#60

Post by WalterBright »

ldc_or_dmd wrote: post #55
WalterBright wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine dropped out of Caltech due to bad grades. I ran into him a decade later, and he said he'd recently graduated from Caltech, having gone back and gotten A's. I asked him what changed, did you get smarter? He laughed, and said no, this time I was willing to work.

Did he have to reapply? Acceptance rates have gone pretty steadily down at most worthwhile colleges since the 1970s. It would be surprising if a candidate got more attractive to a school as time went on. I'm kind of curious about the process of applying to Caltech overall, as someone who didn't have the opportunity to apply to anywhere at 18, but would very much like to when I get the chance. If a person wants to get…

He did not have to reapply. Caltech's stance is once you're admitted, you are welcome to come back and keep trying. I know one who came back multiple times. Your credits don't expire, either, like they do other places. It's one of the great things about Caltech. The administration was just made up of nice people.

I can only speak for the process that was in place when I applied back in the 70s. I sent them a letter asking for an application, which they sent to me. I filled it out, and sent it in with a check for the application fee. Nobody helped me with it, nor was I coached.

They had some specific requirements, like you had to graduate from high school, but I knew one person they waived that for.

What they looked for was a triad:

1. high school success 2. high SAT scores 3. evidence you're a highly motivated person

You had to have all three. And it worked for Caltech - being around smart people can be fun, being around motivated people can be fun, being around smart and motivated people means you're going to have more fun than you ever thought possible.

Caltech wasn't a place where you talked about football. If you wanted to have Carl Sagan drop by the dorm and talk about silicon giraffes, that was what was fun. If your room was next to Hal Finney's, that was fun. If a couple doors down was a guy who designed and built a working computer out of NAND gates, that was fun. If the guy 4 doors down built a powerful amplifier, and set up a giant set of speakers at the nodes of the hall and hooked it to a signal generator to emit sound below the hearing range, but was at the resonant frequency of the building, so it soon would start to go whump whump whump ... hahaha I was never bored for 4 years. Never.

I'd be a bit careful about optimizing for it. You really have to want to go there, and for the people who thrive there, it just is who they are. Caltech just wanted to be sure that the ones they admitted would be a natural fit, not an optimized fit. If you're not a natural fit, you won't be happy there, and will drop out. Nobody wants that.

I was told years later that they were skeptical about my application, and so sent someone out to interview me. He couldn't get a word in edgewise as I went off on all the projects I was working on, showed him diagrams of them, etc. He told the committee he thought I was worth taking a chance on.

I was rejected by MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, despite being legacy for MIT and Harvard.

> Thanks for making D, by the way!

You're welcome! Working on D is a great pleasure of mine. The way Caltech was run is how I've tried to run the D Language Foundation. In many ways the DLF community is our very own Caltech :-)

Post reply on HN