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

Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

mydiplomaticlife.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 307 posts

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#61

Post by TechDebtDevin »

netsharc wrote: post #21
notdonspaulding wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not have internet. From the article: > You were in a country that really was sealed off from the rest of the world. No internet or social media. All press and TV (one channel) dedicated not for news but solely for the glorification of the Leader. That is the Kim dynasty and the regime.

Obviously the average citizen don't have Internet, but an embassy without Internet (most probably through satellite) is unthinkable, they need to be able to talk to their home government. But if we go back 20 years (others have said this is written in the early 2000's), satellite communication was probably worse than 28.8k modems and really expensive, so yeah, it could've been there but only for official and not pers…

They have Iphone 11s in NK and plenty of smartphones. They have some internet, and they'd have more if they West allowed some investment and wasn't punishing a civilian population because of who their leaders are.

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#62

Post by paganel »

> fields to harvest kimchi (cabbages), a vital staple in all North Korean diets. They would then take the kimchi home and pickle it in vast quantities and store it there.

> This kimchi supply would then hopefully get them and their families through the long, bitter winter months.

This reminds me that my parents (they live in the South-Eastern Romanian countryside) make excellent pickled cabbage, in fact eating pickled cabbage is one of my fondest food-related memories from the dreaded 1990s (when there wasn't that much food to go around on account of lack of money, and we had close to no money because of the infamous Shock Therapy).

Very interesting to see how pickled cabbage has been helping people go through rough times at the two opposing sides of Eurasia (on the Korean peninsula and on the European peninsula).

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#63

Post by tekla »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #61
netsharc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the average citizen don't have Internet, but an embassy without Internet (most probably through satellite) is unthinkable, they need to be able to talk to their home government. But if we go back 20 years (others have said this is written in the early 2000's), satellite communication was probably worse than 28.8k modems and really expensive, so yeah, it could've been there but only for official and not pers…

They have Iphone 11s in NK and plenty of smartphones. They have some internet, and they'd have more if they West allowed some investment and wasn't punishing a civilian population because of who their leaders are.

I wonder how NK blocking their own internet from the outside world is the west punishing the NK civilian population.

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#64

Post by bagels »

V__ wrote: post #53

I'll preface this by saying that I can't support this with a source, so take it with a grain of salt. An acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked in that German embassy. Apparently, the extreme isolation of North Korea also made it extremely difficult to have any kind of opsec inside the embassy. Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one. A few days afte…

scif = sensitive compartmented information facility

A room that is supposed to be highly secure with secure communication channels where it is safe to handle or transmit secret information.

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#65

Post by chgs »

thriftwy wrote: post #38

https://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ Artemy Lebedev, a known Russian web designer, visited North Korea and posted his notes with pictures (in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days). There are three more sections with the selector below.

My favourite NK blog is the trip in 2008 from Austria to North Korea via the unexpected route from Russia

https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/10/vienna-pyongya...

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#66

Post by trallnag »

unixhero wrote: post #16
stuff4ben wrote: post #2

This was fascinating! If I could do it all over again, I'd have gone into the US Foreign Service. Maybe not to places like North Korea (which we don't have a presence in anyways), but I'd have loved to travel the world. Maybe in the next life...

Sure, if you could get in. I tried for 5 years in a row to get into my country's service. It failed. Pivoted to information security, hey at least I am a millionaire now.

What currency

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#67

Post by jonathanyc »

Laughed out loud at the unexpected "90/100" rating at the end. Very interesting read. Thought this was interesting in particular:

> When serving in Iraq or Iran, my biggest fear in those places was always the threat of physical harm, be it ambushes on our person or vehicles, being kidnapped, rocket or mortar attacks on our embassy or accommodation. There were close shaves and the threat and the fear never left you in all of these places. > But as far as life in North Korea was concerned, there were none of these fears. Serving in North Korea gave you this strange feeling of being cut off, isolated and very insular and perversely at the same time “safe.”

I wonder how this compares to living in e.g. Libya under Gaddafi vs. after?

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#68

Post by RGamma »

V__ wrote: post #53

I'll preface this by saying that I can't support this with a source, so take it with a grain of salt. An acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked in that German embassy. Apparently, the extreme isolation of North Korea also made it extremely difficult to have any kind of opsec inside the embassy. Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one. A few days afte…

There's a kajillion ways to extract info via analog hole from a well-known room. Unless this room has counter-measures (that are unlikely to be accepted by an authoritarian government) this ain't surprising really.

Re: Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

#70

Post by influx »

V__ wrote: post #53

I'll preface this by saying that I can't support this with a source, so take it with a grain of salt. An acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked in that German embassy. Apparently, the extreme isolation of North Korea also made it extremely difficult to have any kind of opsec inside the embassy. Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one. A few days afte…

Which do you think is more likely, the scif was compromised, or one of the people in the scif was?
Post reply on HN