My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
theguardian.com
My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
1–10 of 123 posts
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#2It'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!
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#3It'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?…
[flagged]
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#4It'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?…
[flagged]
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#5High demand for stories from North Korea and no way to verify them makes me wary of what a fiction writer has written.
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#6It'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?…
[flagged]
I'm sure they do research like any other scientist hopes to do, but they might focus on North Korea specific things like coal chemistry (North Korea has huge coal deposits but very little petroleum, so coal chemistry has a niche there). They probably also focus on a lot of dual-use research like computer security stuff which can be done without having huge resources.
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in North Korea is a sadist or a torturer, although most are totally indoctrinated into the system from birth.
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#7It'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?…
[flagged]
> What do those scientists do?
The same thing that all white-collar workers around the world do. Optimize industrial processes and paper-push in business administration jobs.
As in any society, there are four castes of people. The people who do work, the middle managers who oversee and direct the people doing work, the ruling class, and the security apparatus that keeps the first two, and elements of the third in line.
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#8I wish I could read the rest of the memoir, alas I do not speak Japanese.
I'm unable to determine if the rest of it was published somewhere.
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#9[dead]
Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> What do those scientists do? The same thing that all white-collar workers around the world do. Optimize industrial processes and paper-push in business administration jobs. As in any society, there are four castes of people. The people who do work, the middle managers who oversee and direct the people doing work, the ruling class, and the security apparatus that keeps the first two, and elements of the third in lin…
I doubt it, honestly. I don't mean the scientists are evil, not all of them at least, but they will be forced to do work for the regime, or end up in one of those camps in the mountains. NK is closer to a Mexican cartel in its structure, than to a typical bureaucracy you're describing here, and they operate on the principle "do the evil to those weaker than you, or you will be subjected to this evil yourself".