[HN Gopher] Media files extracted from North Korea's Red Star OS
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Media files extracted from North Korea's Red Star OS
Author : da_big_ghey
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-02-15 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| dmt0 wrote:
| Obligatory, for ease of browsing:
| https://github1s.com/BlackOtton/RedStar-Media/
| Amin3456 wrote:
| How to Take Care of Betta Fish
|
| https://bit.ly/2Zqahul
| tehjoker wrote:
| Say what you will, but these are really pretty photos. It's a
| shame that we so rarely see NK culture except as ways to incite
| non-Koreans. It would be nice if we could see more about how
| ordinary people live, festivals, etc.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Try here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NorthKoreaPics/
|
| Avoid comments ,)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Wow, it's so weirdly normal and anormal at the same time. The
| image of the tobacco cessation center was certainly
| interesting.
|
| Here is the most interesting one I found yet : https://www.re
| ddit.com/r/NorthKoreaPics/comments/hy45ky/roll...
|
| North Korean officials smoking marijuana casually.
| pacman2 wrote:
| You can actually visit NK (not now bc of Corona):
|
| https://www.youngpioneertours.com/
|
| https://www.facebook.com/YoungPioneerTours/
|
| (Disclaimer: while I have no involvement in this company, it is
| run by some buddies of mine)
| Igelau wrote:
| except that one folder
| f430 wrote:
| It's a shame they are not real
| opportune wrote:
| Some of them are, but all of the ones in this folder are very,
| very poorly photoshopped:
| https://github.com/BlackOtton/RedStar-Media/tree/main/Backgr...
| remarkEon wrote:
| Are they supposed to be "photos", or are these paintings or
| something? I honestly can't tell. Doesn't look that much
| different from stylized wallpapers I see all the time in the
| West, to be honest.
|
| Edit: Yeah ... I think these are photoshops, and they're done
| so poorly that I couldn't distinguish it immediately from a
| painting. Maybe the style is intentional, if I'm giving
| benefit of the doubt.
| Symbiote wrote:
| On this image (mentioned above), every single window is lit.
| That seems staged to me.
|
| https://github.com/BlackOtton/RedStar-Media/blob/main/Backgr...
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Not staged in real life, but poorly Photoshopped.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| you actually cannot close the curtains in NK by law (at least
| that was the case in 2005). Still looks photoshopped, but
| might not look that crazy to the person doing it given that
| rule.
|
| If also may or may not have electricity in every home. I
| don't think every window was actually lit in Pyongyang at
| night.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| A lot of the images look photoshopped to me - adding flowers
| to fields, tractors, and the lights in the windows you
| mentioned.
|
| Of course I say that while thinking that most of the Mars
| rover photos also look photoshopped, adding sand dunes and
| rocks without explanation. I've been watching the red sky on
| Mars photos slowly turn blue over the decades - I guess they
| are trying to come clean before another nation puts a lander
| there and reveals NASA had been coloring the sky incorrectly.
| Maybe China will land a rover and show us what Mars really
| looks like just to spite the US?
| idownvoted wrote:
| Fake it is.
|
| Now I want you to imagine why the WPK thinks that a cityscape
| at dusk with lit windows might be good propaganda?
|
| Why something that seems boringly mundane to us, is something
| to brag about for the regime? Something that may uplift the
| OS's users ie. it makes them subconciously dream of something
| exotic like we do when our screensavers show us the great
| barrier reef. Can you spot the "exotic"-part?
| geofft wrote:
| If you applied this level of extrapolation to US-based
| OSes, you'd conclude that Windows XP users have never seen
| green grass or a blue sky in person (they even call it
| "Bliss," an obvious attempt to play with the emotions of a
| despondent populace) and that Mac users can only dream of
| experiencing a proper day and night cycle, a tragic effect
| of smog, light pollution, and a culture of working indoors
| under artificial light.
| idownvoted wrote:
| If, except I didn't. A great barrier reef, a Saharan Dune
| or a pack of whales is exotic, but something most of us
| can see at least once in our lifes if we wanted to.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's not particularly _in_ accurate, but I get your
| point. Two things being true doesn't mean that any story
| you spin linking them is true.
| monocasa wrote:
| If you find the aesthetic choices here interesting, I can
| recommend the book Made in North Korea: Graphics From Everyday
| Life in the DPRK, a collection primarily of consumer packaging
| from North Korea.
| reaperducer wrote:
| My guess is the sign on the hill doesn't read "H O L L Y W O O
| D."
|
| https://github.com/BlackOtton/RedStar-Media/blob/main/Backgr...
| userbinator wrote:
| I think it's praising the Kims.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| It reads widaehan ryeongdoja gimjeongil dongji manse! or Hail
| Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il!
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I watched a YouTube video of a train journey through the DPRK.
| There were signs of that exact kind very frequently. I think
| they have slogans along the lines of "Long Live the Korean
| Workers' Party!" from what I remember, though the one in that
| image doesn't seem to contain the right characters for that.
| There was probably another slogan that I forgot.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I wish it was possible to live in
| Backgrounds/images/seongun8gyeong's North Korea. Alas, it's but a
| fantasy.
| dewey wrote:
| There's also a fun talk about the OS from 2015's CCC:
| https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-lifting_the_fog_on_red_star...
| zython wrote:
| I hope the author has removed all meta-data or otherwise
| reencoded the images such that no traceback is possible to the
| source to the OS.
|
| There was a talk [1] that IIRC mentioned that some userid is
| "baked" into the OS and its apps and can potentially be traced
| back to an individual.
|
| [1]:
| https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-lifting_the_fog_on_red_star...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is almost certainly from the ISO that is already online.
| Some Chinese person on a forum told me once that they went to
| North Korea and were able to just buy the OS at a store, but I
| don't know how accurate this is.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| This one is more interesting:
| https://github.com/takeshixx/redstar-tools
| 4cao wrote:
| Except the files with Korean names in Backgrounds/* and
| Wallpapers/*, everything else seems to be generic.
|
| Names of the said files ran through Google Translate, with some
| minor corrections to the English output (I don't know any
| Korean): Dabaksol Guard Post Snowy Scene
| dabagsolcosoyi seolgyeong Sea of Potato Flowers in
| Taehongdan daehongdanyi gamjaggocbada Mt Paektu Sunrise
| baegdusanyi haedodi Beom'an-ri Scenery beomanriyi
| seongyeong Echo of Woollim Falls ulrimpogpoyi meari
| Night View of Changja River jangjagangyi bulyagyeong
| Azaleas of Cheoryeong ceolryeongyi ceoljjug The Horizon
| of the Handdreval handeurebeolyi jipyeongseon Fly
| Higher deo nopi nalara Dandelion mindeulre Mt
| Paektu Heaven Lake baegdusanceonji Blue Sky pureun haneul
| Landscape Painting punggyeonghwa
|
| Edit: Incorporated corrections from @sanxiyn and @terrorOf below
| sanxiyn wrote:
| South Korea and North Korea use different romanization schemes.
| So for example, daehongdan is properly romanized
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taehongdan_County. ("Agriculture
| is also key, with the county leading the nation in potato
| production.") Google Translate (as expected) seems unaware that
| it should use North Korean rominzation scheme to romanize North
| Korean place names.
| 4cao wrote:
| I'm aware there are different romanization systems but not
| sure which is which. I've corrected Taehongdan. I guess it
| should say Paektu not Baekdu too?
|
| Update: Paektu appears to be the DPRK spelling. Source:
| http://sori.org/hangul/romanizations.html#Roman_Consonants
| Igelau wrote:
| > Dabaksol Guard Post Snowy Scene
|
| That's the only one in the set that didn't let me down. It
| looks like someone took a Thomas Kinkade diner placemat and
| asked an 8 year-old to put some cannons on it.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Agreed, the birds are an especially nice touch[1] (clearly
| not doves of peace).
|
| 1: https://github.com/BlackOtton/RedStar-
| Media/blob/main/Backgr...
| nrp wrote:
| Those are ggaci, Korean Magpie. It's a somewhat common and
| culturally important bird in Korea.
| terrorOf wrote:
| corrections:
|
| dabagsolcosoyi seolgyeong - snowy scene of guard post Dabaksol
|
| jangjagang - river(gang) Changja [Zhangjiagang spelling looks
| very Chinese-y]
|
| baegdusan ceonji - the crater lake on top of the mountain
| baekdu is called that
| 4cao wrote:
| Thank you for the corrections, I've edited the parent post.
| The lake on top of the Baekdu (Paektu?) Mountain appears to
| be called Heaven Lake:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_Lake
|
| (Not sure why your comment was downvoted but I vouched for
| it, so it's back now, hopefully for good.)
| tomcooks wrote:
| Isn't this a violation of copyright? Assuming edia is protected
| by international law even when you don't particularly like the
| nation that produced said content.
| retrac wrote:
| Possibly. More of an interesting question philosophically than
| purely legally, IMO.
|
| The issue of copyright in traditionally Communist countries is
| interesting, as they don't generally recognize it. North Korea
| had no copyright at all until they passed a (probably purely
| for show) law meeting the minimum requirements of the Berne
| Convention in 2001 so they could enter some global treaties and
| trade arrangements.
|
| Internally, there appears to really be no such concept in North
| Korean society.
| unicornporn wrote:
| Copyright is bourgeoisie concept. Ask Kim.
| sorokod wrote:
| and fratricide. Ask Kim.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| North Korea has local copyright laws and is a signatory to
| the Berne Convention.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| And yet, Red Star OS does not open-source any upstream
| contributions. I'm sure there were some modifications made
| that were not disclosed in compliance with applicable
| licenses.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| IIRC it's mostly bog-standard. Most of their
| modifications are either simply changing the branding,
| changing the i18n files, or adding custom software. That
| said, it would probably be quite fun to send GPL-
| compliance requests for source code, I almost want to try
| :)
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| what are they going to do, sue?
|
| (this is my answer to _every_ _one_ of my actions that may
| be construed as copyright infringement)
| collegeburner wrote:
| https://archive.vn/QHkz8
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| Yep. Like the hysteria about China trolling through my
| (American citizen) data from my phone. CCP probably isn't
| going to extraordinarily rendition me, whatever horrible,
| unkind, true-or-untrue things I say about them. The US
| Government? Fuck no I don't want them going through my
| data, they've already proven they don't actually give a
| fuck about the piece of paper from which they derive
| power.
| f430 wrote:
| ped*ant*ry /'ped(@)ntre/ noun excessive
| concern with minor details and rules.
| nexthash wrote:
| Are you serious? Let me remind you that the Kim family's little
| regime has killed hundred of thousands of people and is under a
| complete economic embargo for its human rights violations. I
| can defame, republish, and make money off of anything that
| comes out of there if I choose, and there is nothing that they
| can do to stop me.
|
| Sending a representative of the regime to a court in the US to
| pursue copyright is by itself an earth-shattering precedent,
| and if it happens the rep will probably be laughed out of that
| courtroom right into a jail cell if they don't try to defect.
| The point is, feed your citizens before trying to be taken
| seriously.
| ymbeld wrote:
| I believe they are making a point.
|
| It's easy to see the cruelties of other regimes but a bit
| harder to distinguish the propaganda coming from within one's
| own regime.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26139364
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > if it happens the rep will probably be laughed out of that
| courtroom right into a jail cell if they don't try to defect
|
| The US does not jail representatives of enemy nations as a
| matter of course. There is a North Korean representative in
| New York (to the UN) and they are not being arrested and
| thrown in jail. As long as they follow the local laws, I
| expect that any other representative (like a hypothetical one
| that wants to sue for alleged copyright infringement) would
| be similarly protected by the law.
| labster wrote:
| The first thing this capitalist does when he sees a photo of
| nature's bounty is to ask who owns the beauty and have they
| been paid.
| alibarber wrote:
| Nature's bountiful - anti aircraft guns? (In the first image)
| collegeburner wrote:
| And the first thing a communist does is starve out the native
| inhabitants or erect a concentration camp.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Quite sure you are thinking of capitalists there buddy
| [deleted]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Hot take: bad people claim to use whatever economic
| system is most politically convenient, and use whatever
| economic system is most practically convenient, for them
| to stay in power.
| lscotte wrote:
| No.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-02-15 23:00 UTC)