Live data from Hacker News

My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

theguardian.com

31–40 of 123 posts

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#31
post #29

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?

Practically everything you read on the western media about NK is completely made up. It's a country with a seemingly endless supply of fan fiction! My favourite kind of fan fiction about NK is... let me think... ah yes, when Kim Jong Un has had some family member executed... only for them to reappear a few months later.

[flagged]

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically everything you read on the western media about NK is completely made up. It's a country with a seemingly endless supply of fan fiction! My favourite kind of fan fiction about NK is... let me think... ah yes, when Kim Jong Un has had some family member executed... only for them to reappear a few months later.

[flagged]

I'd be interested in seeing a wider range of answers to the original question as well.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#33
post #5

High demand for stories from North Korea and no way to verify them makes me wary of what a fiction writer has written.

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?

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#34
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

I used it to read some webnovels a few months ago. It's much better than other machine translators (like google or deepl) but it's a bit tedious to use because of the character limit.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#35
post #17

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…

Yeah, it's weird how I didn't care about school at all when I was younger, but now I feel like it would be absolutely amazing to be able to learn all of this as it is. I think it's mainly though because I've experienced more of "actual life" and trying to survive on my own so all of that speaks more to me. Otherwise it seems like it's clueless theory I am forced to learn, but now I can relate my own life's experience with it.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#36
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?…

[flagged]

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 himself a villa once, but he never got to live in it, because the rest of the leaders make it understandable to him that it will end badly. So he ended in one of the regular homes. (you can google Ochabówka - I've been inside, and again - it's like twice as big as a regular american home, nothing like a villa you would imagine).

You can also google how Gorbachev and other Soviet party leaders were living. It was better than common people but not much.

The main difference in quality of life was that the regular police couldn't just lock you up (secret police could though), and you wouldn't be beaten up by simply showing on a street during work hours, or doing some other crazy stuff like wearing colorful socks or long hair. I mean, no party official would dare to do it anyway, but regular police wouldn't stop them.

So on one hand - yeah, the societal divide was way lower. But it meant nobody was free and everybody was poor - as in no TVs, no meat, and even a toilet paper was a luxury. Nobody I know would want to get back to that.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#37
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm satirizing the Western industry of dehumanizing/patronizing North Koreans. They are human beings just like us, even if our governments hate each other.

They are human beings just like us. That doesn't make their society just like any other society.

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.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#39
post #13
post #8

I 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.

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.

Re: My doomed career as a North Korean novelist

#40
post #17

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…

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.

Post reply on HN