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

71–80 of 123 posts

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#71

Post by Veraticus »

some_random wrote: post #25
its_ethan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ok serious question, what is it about North Korea that causes a subset of HN commenters to leap to it's defense? Russia, China, Iran, etc receive a similar treatment sometimes but never to nearly the degree NK does, what's with that?

Basically one of these three things:

1. Extreme anti-Westernism, 2. Extreme anti-Americanism, 3. Extreme contrarianism.

The usual result is you believe that all the sources that agree about how awful life in Russia, China, North Korea and so on are lying because the uniformity of their reporting is so consistent. (The obvious answer, that maybe it really does suck there for a lot of people, is dismissed as propaganda.)

Surprisingly smart people can be paranoid enough to believe everyone is lying to them or there’s some hidden secret to the world or politics only they can parse out; it’s easy for such people to fall down this rabbit hole.

That’s how most wind up being a tankie or Putin apologist or whatever.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#72

Post by eru »

adolph wrote: post #65
n4r9 wrote: post #2

It's always fascinating to hear about the cultural structures within North Korea. The image in my head is one where 5% are comfortable party officials and 95% are starving labourers. Of course that's not true: there are intellectuals and scientists in the middle, like in any other society. A related article was posted a few months ago regarding North Korean sci-fi. Also fascinating! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?…

You might be interested in or have already read the Inspector O series by “Frank Church.” To the degree it is accurate (or not) it was fascinating to think of all the things that a mostly stable but alien-to-me society must contain. Cops, municipal workers of all sorts, and the parallel world of a Communist party. https://www.amazon.com/Corpse-Koryo-Inspector-Novel-Novels/d...

Of course, you only need municipal workers, if you have municipalities.

Eg a nomadic society wouldn't have them.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#73

Post by dev_slash_null »

credit_guy wrote: post #59
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 pr…

> How exactly is education a privilege? At least in the US, everyone has access to public education.

The article is literally about life in North Korea...

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#74

Post by plasmatix »

whatshisface wrote: post #52
l3mure wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand, Americans lack the perspective of a society that has been invaded multiple times in the last century. And remains under threat from one such dangerous and hostile invader.

Framing it as violating a noble ideal of “free speech” I think gives it more importance than it deserves.

Seems plausible such a trade off is a net good for South Korea. We live in the misinformation age. Look at the crazy stuff some people believe. South Korea has effectively outlawed pro North Korea propaganda. Hard to quantify the averted harm of such a policy, but the price seems minimal.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#75

Post by hulitu »

> A writer’s life is highly competitive

I wonder how it is in US. Are there obscure writers living only from writing ? Where I live, a lot of writers have a daily job as journalists or NGOs so they don't seem to make much money from writing. And the bookstores are filled with "cheap crap" noone reads.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#76

Post by WalterBright »

hodgesrm wrote: post #58
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.

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

I learned it the hard way, too.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#77

Post by justworkout »

Veraticus wrote: post #71
some_random wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok serious question, what is it about North Korea that causes a subset of HN commenters to leap to it's defense? Russia, China, Iran, etc receive a similar treatment sometimes but never to nearly the degree NK does, what's with that?

Basically one of these three things: 1. Extreme anti-Westernism, 2. Extreme anti-Americanism, 3. Extreme contrarianism. The usual result is you believe that all the sources that agree about how awful life in Russia, China, North Korea and so on are lying because the uniformity of their reporting is so consistent. (The obvious answer, that maybe it really does suck there for a lot of people, is dismissed as propaganda…

You can hate the politics and foreign policy or various degrees of brutality in all of those countries, but implying Russia and China are as bad as North Korea is a little extreme. Doubly so when you imply any positive opinion is just contrarianism, when people on HN have freely traveled or even lived within the first two.

You can honestly have a pretty comfy life in the first two countries, especially as an expat. And at least with China, the brutality is hyped up to a point that it's disappointing when you arrive there expecting to be some rebel in some 1984 dystopia and find out people are happy and living a quality of life no different from Europe or the US. In some ways better (cheap cost of living, world-class public transport), and some ways worse (internet and freedom of speech is clearly restricted, but nowhere near the murderous levels of North Korea or even Russia arresting people disapproving of war. Just posts being blocked in 99.9999% of cases, like a heavy-handed version censorship you'd find on reddit but applied almost everywhere). Like a more relaxed version of the UK which arrests people for offensive twitter posts or teaching a dog an offensive salute.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#78

Post by whatshisface »

plasmatix wrote: post #74
whatshisface wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On the other hand, Americans lack the perspective of a society that has been invaded multiple times in the last century. And remains under threat from one such dangerous and hostile invader. Framing it as violating a noble ideal of “free speech” I think gives it more importance than it deserves. Seems plausible such a trade off is a net good for South Korea. We live in the misinformation age. Look at the crazy stuff…

Balanced against the science fiction that Koreans could be programmed into welcoming an invader with open arms is the real life fact that somebody was put in jail for the crime of writing poetry.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#79

Post by jillesvangurp »

BarryMilo wrote: post #28
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.

Can ChatGPT translate a whole book now? Without too much inconvenience

Deepl might do a decent job and it supports pdfs and other document formats. We use it a lot for translating business documents and contracts. Mainly between German and English. But they support Japanese too.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#80

Post by a_bonobo »

adolph wrote: post #65
n4r9 wrote: post #2

It's always fascinating to hear about the cultural structures within North Korea. The image in my head is one where 5% are comfortable party officials and 95% are starving labourers. Of course that's not true: there are intellectuals and scientists in the middle, like in any other society. A related article was posted a few months ago regarding North Korean sci-fi. Also fascinating! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?…

You might be interested in or have already read the Inspector O series by “Frank Church.” To the degree it is accurate (or not) it was fascinating to think of all the things that a mostly stable but alien-to-me society must contain. Cops, municipal workers of all sorts, and the parallel world of a Communist party. https://www.amazon.com/Corpse-Koryo-Inspector-Novel-Novels/d...

I like the Inspector Chen Cao novels, too; they're crime novels that usually involve corruption in the Chinese Communist Party https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126606.Death_of_a_Red_He...

The author Qiu Xiaolong lives in exile in the US.

Post reply on HN