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My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

theguardian.com

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Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#101

Post by wrp »

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?…

Not surprisingly, popular ideas about life in North Korea are simplistic and exaggerated. I'll just make a few comments based on casual study while living in South Korea.

First, popular support for the regime is much greater than Westerners typically realize. My wild guess is that at least a third are true believers and much less than that would consider lifting a finger toward regime change. When characterizing North Korea, it is more accurate to call it a brutal society rather than a brutal regime.

Second, a large contributor to this situation is the demographic outcome of the civil war and population management afterwards. During the war, massive numbers of anti-communists were killed or migrated south, and massive numbers of pro-communists were killed or went north. On top of this segregation, the Northern regime established residence zones such that populations were relocated according to their perceived loyalty.

Third, due partly to the relocations, the northern part of the country has the population with the least love for the regime. They also have the greatest opportunity to escape, being close the China. It is often noted that North Korean refugees in China and South Korea have accents from this region. When these refugees tell interviewers that they would like to return home but can't, my interpretation is that they miss their hometowns, but fear punishment by the regime.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#102

Post by Veraticus »

justworkout wrote: post #77
Veraticus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

I’m gay, so I feel like my quality of life in any of those places would be quite a bit worse than in the US.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#103

Post by robertlagrant »

the_af wrote: post #96
robertlagrant wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sighing, world-weary non-response isn't worth anything. I've clearly laid out what I thought your response said, and what I think about that. Why reply with zero courtesy and zero content?

My comment does have content; it rejects your interpretation and also reasserts something: that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics, and they've been taught that there's no more evil thing than Communism, and therefore these topics are fraught with danger. Anyone wishing to di…

> that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics

I agree, but for the opposite reason. As soon as I replied to you, you stopped talking about the topic itself and started communicating how tired you were, and how laborious talking about all this is. That's why you can't have a rational discourse on this stuff.

But other people can, and do. And no one stops them.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#104

Post by the_af »

robertlagrant wrote: post #103
the_af wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment does have content; it rejects your interpretation and also reasserts something: that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics, and they've been taught that there's no more evil thing than Communism, and therefore these topics are fraught with danger. Anyone wishing to di…

> that people (mostly in the English speaking world) aren't capable of rational discourse about socialism or redistribution or inequality because these are all Communism-adjacent topics I agree, but for the opposite reason. As soon as I replied to you, you stopped talking about the topic itself and started communicating how tired you were, and how laborious talking about all this is. That's why you can't have a ratio…

Well, you did claim that

> You've decided the person does like socialism and communism, but is afraid to say so

Maybe this assertion of yours didn't help? Are you willing to consider this?

edit: but since the OP also misunderstood my observation, I'm willing to concede the point I wasn't clear enough.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#105

Post by the_af »

opportune wrote: post #98
the_af wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lo…

I think you might be inferring too much about my phrasing. I wasn't trying to add token disclaimers to pass off praise of socialism/communism - I was trying to get ahead of the reply "yeah but the cons far outweigh the pros"/"there are better ways to ensure equality than making everybody poor", which are actually positions I'd agree with. I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to…

Thanks for the honest reply!

I think we're mostly in agreement, and let me clarify I wasn't even trying to disagree with you on anything.

> I wasn't trying to add token disclaimers to pass off praise of socialism/communism

This wasn't what I tried to imply, but evidently I should have expressed myself better: I think you raised valid points, and my observation was regret about the fact you -- like many in forums like this -- must coach every topic like this with disclaimers about not being communist sympathizers. You had to preempt the accusation by making it explicit this is not what you're saying, which to me is a sad state of affairs for online discourse. Like you said, we should be able to examine ideas from all sides "because some of them might be good", but this becomes very difficult if one must fend off accusations of being a commie for even daring to suggest something is positive about socialism.

> I don't know exactly how to articulate this, but I wish people were willing to consider "capitalism vs socialism" less as a black and white "good vs evil" dichotomy, and more as a vast spectrum or cluster of policies. In reality, those are the kinds of systems we live with.

Yes, 10000000% agreed. This is also what I believe. I wish we could discuss the more "socialist" side of policies more openly and without disclaimers.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#106

Post by plasmatix »

whatshisface wrote: post #78
plasmatix wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since you don’t seem to be aware, propaganda could have negative real world impact influencing (not even mind control!) a small group of people. Imagine the impact is only a group of 5 people “defect” to North Korea under the belief it is some paradise. Thats harms.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#107

Post by squidsoup »

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

Sceptical that an LLM would produce good literary translations - that requires a nuanced understanding of the author's rhythm and style. Maybe if the model was trained only with writing from that one particular author.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#108

Post by whatshisface »

plasmatix wrote: post #106
whatshisface wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Since you don’t seem to be aware, propaganda could have negative real world impact influencing (not even mind control!) a small group of people. Imagine the impact is only a group of 5 people “defect” to North Korea under the belief it is some paradise. Thats harms.

That's just bad advice. How can you ban bad advice? I can't imagine what society would be like if nonprofessionals had liability for the harms that came to other people as a result of acting on their opinions, the way we have liabilities for doctors or lawyers in a client-provider relationship. Yeesh, you'd be putting people in jail for the crime of being dumb online.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#109

Post by pphysch »

duxup wrote: post #99
pphysch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No society is the same. DPRK society is radically different than ours (e.g. by not valuing individualism), to the point that it causes a xenophobic reaction in a lot of people, but it is based on the same human fundamentals as ours.

I think your statements are really opaque in this conversation. It took until this post here before I had a clue what and what direction you were even going. Your other posts could have been read to indicate exactly the opposite of the one I'm responding to.

Satire is bound to fly over some people's heads, that's what makes it satire.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#110

Post by duxup »

pphysch wrote: post #109
duxup wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your statements are really opaque in this conversation. It took until this post here before I had a clue what and what direction you were even going. Your other posts could have been read to indicate exactly the opposite of the one I'm responding to.

Satire is bound to fly over some people's heads, that's what makes it satire.

Satire isn't satire unless people understand it. In that case it is just unintelligible.
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