[HN Gopher] Tips to grow your North Korean Startup
___________________________________________________________________
Tips to grow your North Korean Startup
Author : jimhi
Score : 131 points
Date : 2022-01-06 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mrsteinberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mrsteinberg.com)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Interestingly this article could serve as a template for 'Tips to
| grow your illicit drug business in the USA' with very few
| changes:
|
| - you may get shot but police may simply take some of the goods;
|
| - remove any labels of origin to reduce potential charges;
|
| - contemplate various smuggling strategies;
|
| - don't work with people you care about (friends and family);
|
| - be careful where you store your money;
|
| Banned economic activity is similar everywhere, it seems.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I guess it's thematically close enough for you to cast
| whataboutism, but no further.
|
| In NK you have to worry about those closest to you monitoring
| you, you also have to worry about if being caught your entire
| family being labeled as bad blood. Some punishments go multiple
| generations deep.
|
| Conducting 'illicit activity' in an authoritarian country vs a
| judicial one is a very different experience, in both the
| activities banned (almost everything in NK, even thinking), the
| risks, the punishments, and the enemies.
|
| Doesn't really set in until you hear stories from NK defectors:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTEDYEwfiwk
| jimhi wrote:
| In 2018, I got connected to 5 refugees who escaped North Korea to
| the USA. What surprised me was all 5 were able to escape by
| different variations of saving up enough money to bribe people
| along the way.
|
| The only way to save up money for their ages (16-23) was to
| become "entrepreneurial"
|
| EDIT:
|
| If you are interested in North Korea, check out the stories by
| some friends of mine:
|
| Charles - North Korean refugee turned programmer
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziqq5gUXu8g
|
| North Korean Spy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rLqYXTaFI
|
| Girl with parents who worked in the government whose whole family
| escaped https://www.youtube.com/c/Pyonghattan/videos
| teakettle42 wrote:
| This seems universal to authoritarian states where corruption
| is the only viable strategy to get ahead.
|
| Unfortunately, it also seems to consistently produce an
| entrenched, corrupt power class that persists long after the
| regime is overthrown.
|
| See also the former Soviet Bloc.
| pphysch wrote:
| vkou wrote:
| All power structures are authoritarian. Get rid of
| congress, and you'll simply have your local landholders pay
| private enforcers to keep the rabble in line. Property
| rights in theory apply to everyone, but in practice, are
| consistently enforced in a way that protects large, wealthy
| property owners more than everyone else.
| gitgrump wrote:
| Erm, no? That's unnecessarily reductionist. "Can compel you
| to pay taxes" is not the same as "authoritarian". Go ahead,
| criticize the President online in the United States. Notice
| how you weren't jailed or executed? Now try something
| similar in an authoritarian nation.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Laws are enforced through use of force or literally
| denying freedom of movement, or by threatening to do the
| above to subjects who do not obey.
|
| It's a spectrum. How violent are the reprisals, how
| lethal, how indiscriminate. How egregious are the prison
| terms, how outsized are the fines and fees. But all
| governments are inherently authoritarian, unless they
| allow subjects to instead choose punishment by exile
| instead of strongarm tactics. I'm not aware of any that
| do. Mostly because there's nowhere to be exiled to. All
| governments have claimed all of the available land, so
| you can't even choose exile independently. Societies vary
| on the freedoms they allow; all governmental bodies are
| by nature authoritarian. If no one were to submit to
| them, nations would have no standing to declare binding
| authority over members of the public. Governments are
| systems of control, and that control is allegedly by
| consent of the governed. However, if one is never given a
| reasonable alternative or opportunity to object, they are
| not free. They are only as free as their society allows
| them to be. This one-sided state of affairs makes freely-
| given consent to be governed impossible.
|
| I am open to being convinced otherwise, though. We're
| freer than we've ever been, but we've only changed the
| window dressing. We're still beholden to government
| representatives that themselves have multiple competing
| interests. Full direct democracy with vote delegation for
| those who want it is a start. Proportional representation
| instead of first past the post elections would also be
| necessary.
| pphysch wrote:
| Are you aware what the current date is and its
| significance to dissidents of the current regime in
| Washington? Hundreds of (primarily non-violent)
| dissidents prosecuted and incarcerated in the last year
| alone.
|
| To be clear, I don't agree politically with those
| dissidents.
| germandiago wrote:
| This is the sad truth of places like Cuba or North Korea.
| Everything is forbidden to the point that eating is difficult.
| So people get corrupted and the guards, etc. just want their
| part.
|
| None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying
| to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make
| everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for
| trying to survive.
| FredPret wrote:
| Communism is taxes and government regulation gone mad
| thechao wrote:
| Communism is the ownership of the means of production by
| the workers. You're talking about about an out-of-control
| regulatory state; maybe one with an authoritarian bent?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by
| workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than
| USSR which basically had everything state owned.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I know this was a snarky comment, but I have to point out
| - you know pensioners don't work, right?
| germandiago wrote:
| He is talking about the history of communism or socialism
| towards a communism system anywhere it has been applied.
|
| That system you define there just exists in your head. It
| is not possible. It is like pretending the existence of
| unicorns. The real one _every time_ ends up in an
| authoritarian regime.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I mean... if you can't believe in something that hasn't
| yet existed, how does anything come to be at all? Or do
| you deny that there is any theoretical thought behind
| communism at all? Is it just something people suddenly
| found themselves doing, and it failed and that was that?
|
| How does someone dream of things that are better? How can
| you have faith in anything at all? Is not the love you
| feel towards your friends and family kind of like the
| unicorn you are describing? Do you even really feel love,
| if its just in your "head"?
| nradov wrote:
| I deny that there is any meaningful or worthwhile
| theoretical thought behind communism. It was all just
| made up with zero connection to objective reality.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| An extremely bold claim! In your mind, the communist
| project is one of the greatest and relatively most
| successful conspiracies to date.
|
| Do you think that all those books people have written
| about it, both for and critically against, are just
| filled nonsense, and the writers and thinkers just had to
| count on the fact that nobody would actually read them?
| And that I, who have read a small portion, am somehow
| hypnotized into delusion by them, thinking I have gained
| knowledge, when in fact there was no knowledge to be
| gained at all?
|
| I can't of course argue against this, as I am implicitly
| deluded in general, but I would still question your
| overall rhetorical strategy here.
| germandiago wrote:
| I could if it did not end the same in Bulgaria, Romania,
| Poland, Soviet Union, Cuba, Angola, North Korea,
| Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Venezuela (they literally smashed
| this country, with its own set of problems before, after
| Chavez entered) Eastern Germany and a ton more. Those
| were all in one way or another tries to implement
| socialism or communism of some kind.
|
| For more hints: compare Eastern Germany to Western or
| North Korea to South Korea.
|
| Didn't you have enough examples of what this ends up in?
| I can sympathize with a never-tried-before idea or one
| with a couple of failure and a couple of success stories.
| But not with something with that track record, sorry.
|
| Or you are telling me it has not been done right? I think
| you guys underestimate the effects of intervention:
| intervention calls for more intervention which calls for
| limiting freedom which derives every time in
| authoritarian regimes.
|
| It is you guys who do not listen. I will recommend a book
| I think it is quite eye-opening in this regard: The fatal
| conceit from Friedrich Hayek.
|
| P.S.: A list here from former or currently socialist
| places: Afghanistan Albania
| Algeria Angola Belarus Benin
| Bulgaria Cambodia Cape Verde Chad
| Congo (People's Republic of) Congo (Republic of)
| Czechoslovakia (dissolved) Djibouti East
| Germany (reunited with West Germany) Egypt
| Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Ghana
| Grenada Guinea Hungary Iraq
| Libya Madagascar Mali Mauritania
| Mongolia Mozambique Myanmar (formerly
| Burma) North Korea North Vietnam
| Poland Romania Senegal Seychelles
| Sierra Leone Somalia South Yemen
| Sudan Syria Tunisia Ukraine
| Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.)
| Yugoslavia Zambia
|
| A list of socialist or communist governments now:
| Algeria Angola Argentina
| Bangladesh Barbados Bolivia Congo
| (Republic of) Djibouti Guinea-Bissau
| Guyana Mauritius Mexico Moldova
| Mozambique Namibia Nepal
| Nicaragua Peru Portugal Saint
| Vincent and the Grenadines South Africa
| Sri Lanka Syria Tanzania
| Venezuela Zambia Zimbabwe
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| If you treat people and the history of their social
| relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can
| be believed or assured than inputting variables and
| observing the output, I can see how you would have your
| conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to
| think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better,
| or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't
| seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me.
|
| (Dig further with Hayek, I am sure you will find much
| worse things in his naive Darwinism than anything in your
| scary communist countries.)
| the_af wrote:
| > A list of socialist or communist governments now:
|
| > [...] Argentina [...]
|
| No.
|
| Source: I live in Argentina and it's neither socialist
| nor communist. It's currently center-left capitalist. Our
| immediately preceding government was center-right
| capitalist. In the 70s we had far-right capitalist
| military dictatorship (Chicago boys influenced economy
| wise, School of the Americas trained).
| germandiago wrote:
| > If you treat people and the history of their social
| relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can
| be believed or assured than inputting variables and
| observing the output, I can see how you would have your
| conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to
| think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better,
| or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't
| seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me.
|
| First, you did not build a valid criticism about Hayek,
| just labeled him as Darwinist. Second, your reasonings
| are as if you see 1000 people jumping from a 5th floor
| and smashing themselves against the ground every time and
| still saying: there must be another possibility. No, man,
| it is in front of you, do some analysis, please!
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Ok, you are right, I will study the histories of those
| countries in your list, and try to see what happened to
| them! Thank you for your point of view, it's invaluable.
| jonway wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with your comment overall
| but there are a lot of problems with your list and your
| methodology.
|
| 1: Why isn't france or china on the former or currently
| socialist list? There are many others.
|
| 2: Consider the volatility and violent turmoil, war,
| genocide, atrocities from those former and present
| countries from the timeperiod of german unification under
| bismarck (somewhat arbitrarily chosen date) to the
| present day.
|
| 3: There have been many non-communist and non-socialst
| nations which where bad and there are still such regimes
| in existence today.
|
| Eliminating "communism" or "socialism" was not a cure for
| anything. Many of these countries share different traits
| which would have a much greater effect on their
| stability.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I could understand that perhaps I am a little provocative
| or too radical for this crowd (and am used to the
| downvotes), but it is really sad/discouraging that this
| measured, historically-minded, and generally rational
| comment is getting downvoted too!
| ekanes wrote:
| In theory this type of intellectual engagement is fine,
| but if the dream turns into a nightmare Every Single Time
| we try it, results in untold suffering and the deaths of
| millions... it loses legitimacy.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Your definition is the correct one for what Communism
| strives to be. A communal ownership of things.
|
| It's unfortunate that such a sensible idea only becomes
| justification for kleptocratic oligarchies which is what
| the other poster was going on about.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership"
| requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A
| government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily
| totalitarian.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Or, it requires a community that shares things - like
| tribes or... Communes. I don't engage in negotiations
| with my wife or my friends, we cooperate. Maybe I could
| cooperate with other workers and form some kind of...
| Cooperative. There's a reason "socialism" starts with
| "social".
| germandiago wrote:
| And it will be like this until the end of the days.
| tacocataco wrote:
| So you claim to know what's going to happen till the end
| of days?
| merpnderp wrote:
| How many countries has communism been attempted in? 25?
| And of those, 4 remain officially communist, but whose
| economies have either transited to free markets or are
| moving that way. It is safe to say only the dreamers
| still believe in communism.m
|
| And people keep saying that communism hasn't been tried.
| But it has. It starts with the state trying to be
| socialist and then "withering away" to full on communism
| (according to the ideology's author). Only we never get
| past that part. We usually go straight to concentration
| camps, murdering those who disagree with the revolution,
| relative poverty, and a extremely uncompetitive economy.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Yeah, state socialism doesn't work, that much is
| exceedingly obvious. That doesn't mean that we should
| just give up and accept capitalism as "the best we can
| do" as a species. It's just clear that authoritarian
| means are funnily enough not the route to a less
| authoritarian future.
| ModernMech wrote:
| People forget that there are many axes of the political
| compass. I think political scholars count over a dozen.
| Who knows how many there are, but it's definitely not a
| simple linear left/right dichotomy. The other important
| axis is the authoritarian/democratic dichotomy. We know
| that the left/authoritarian (Soviets) quadrant of this
| space doesn't work, just as we know the
| right/authoritarian (Nazis) quadrant doesn't work.
|
| We have evidence in America that the right/democratic
| quadrant kind of works, but it leads to a lot of sadness
| still (Jim Crow) but at least there are mechanisms to fix
| it internally. It can get better (Civil Rights Act) but
| it can also get worse; we are finding now that if the
| Overton window moves too far to the right, there seems to
| be a tendency for America to become more authoritarian.
| We don't really know what going too far left looks like
| in America, because it's never even come close to
| happening; despite all the hysteric labeling of Democrats
| as Communists, they are really more liberal than left.
| There is no mainstream leftist representation in the US
| Government, not even Bernie or AOC (the Green New Deal is
| written squarely within the framework of capitalism).
|
| There are a lot of people out there saying that the
| left/democratic quadrant looks attractive, but they are
| shouted down by people who say that we can't _ever_ try
| that, because look at what the left /authoritarian
| quadrant did in the past. People who are here in this
| thread right now. I think that's a big mistake, and
| leaves us at a suboptimal local maxima as a society.
| germandiago wrote:
| Of course it has. Many people do not understand that the
| dynamics of intervention call for more intervention and
| ends up in authoritarism. Every _single_ time. That is
| why it _always_ fails.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's the reason it's harder to work in a resort or operate a
| taxi in Cuba than it is to become a "doctor".
|
| The former has access to foreign currency with a real value.
| The later can hope to maybe get an exit visa (the government
| will loan it's "doctors" to foreign regimes in exchange for
| real currencies).
| camdat wrote:
| Why the quotes around doctor? Cuba has some of the best
| health outcomes in the LatAm (and arguably the world), it
| seems like their doctors are of a higher quality than most.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I'm curious why you put the word doctor in quotation marks,
| as if to imply they are substandard.
|
| It was always my understanding that while Cuba lacks a lot
| of things that many other countries take for granted, that
| the quality of its doctors was outstanding. I even remember
| seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of
| the pandemic.
|
| Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a
| false impression for all this time?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under
| a false impression for all this time?
|
| Annecdotal evidence, but an acquintance of mine (who is
| an MD) encountered Cuban "doctors" in South America and
| wasn't impressed at all.
|
| > I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper
| at the beginning of the pandemic.
|
| The thing is that Cuba made a lot of claims about their
| handling of the pandemic, but as with every communist
| country out there it's hard to really know what's really
| going on.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| >The thing is that Cuba made a lot of claims about their
| handling of the pandemic, but as with every communist
| country out there it's hard to really know what's really
| going on.
|
| B.S. You can tell with satellite imagery very easily. Are
| people being locked down? Is mobility down? No? Okay
| then, are hospitals obviously overwhelmed? No? Then their
| data is largely accurate.
| camdat wrote:
| It's very odd to me this comment is downvoted whereas the
| person offering an anecdote and extrapolating it to
| denigrate an entire countries doctors isn't.
|
| We have independently verifiable data showing that these
| countries COVID data is at least relatively accurate.[0]
| Deaths are very, very difficult to hide and even more-so
| when millions of eyeballs are on you.
|
| [0]: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n415
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know about DPRK but I have been to Cuba for a 2 weeks
| vacation, so I had time to go out of the default tourists
| spots.
|
| What I've seen is this: Those who have access to tourists or
| to the government are rich. Corruption is rampant as I've
| seen people bribing police right at the airport to have their
| things sorted out.
|
| The mainstream corruption in society revolves around casa
| particulars and taxis. Essentially, you have right to rent a
| room and you have right to ride a taxi but there are strict
| limits on how much you can do it. So what more
| entrepreneurial people do? Simply distribute the business
| ownership to their friends and relatives on paper and keep
| growing and running their enterprises.
|
| Also, there are two different types of shops and businesses:
| Locals only shops, locals only restaurants, locals only buses
| that are at very poor quality and I believe they are free or
| heavily subsidised and there are better quality versions that
| have prices similar to the European countries(prices way
| beyond a person with a salary can afford). So who do you
| think eats at these expensive restaurants? Yes, tourists -
| but also people who have access to tourists and people who
| work for the government.
|
| One day a wandered around my casa particular in Havana and
| ended up in a place with very nice houses quite close to
| governmental buildings. I took some photos, enjoyed the place
| and ate at a restaurant. Then I noticed that the restaurant
| got very busy with military personel and well dressed people.
| Those were definitely not tourists, those were people from
| the nearby governmental buildings having a dinner after work.
|
| Very interesting experience overall. Almost completely
| positive, full of life lessons about so many things including
| classes in the society where they are not supposed to exists.
| I'm also convinced that consumerism is not the only way to a
| happy life and abundance and excess are not necessarily the
| answer. The first week was hard, the second week I was
| completely happy to have only 2 options for beer and 1 option
| for chocolate.
| germandiago wrote:
| You described quite well a few things here.
| [deleted]
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Never met anyone that admitted they went to Cuba for
| vacation.
|
| It's the same as going on those North Korean tours.
|
| You supported the murderous regime and oppression there.
|
| Obama should have never lifted that embargo, no American
| should have ever participated.
|
| Until Cuba gives people their inalienable rights, they
| should remain sanctioned.
|
| We should help those who escape, even help them to, not
| those who prop the regime up.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Relax, I'm not American and the place is full of tourists
| and happy locals(not all, but it's fine. In which country
| everyone is happy?).
|
| On the bright side, I never went to Saudi Arabia. I
| really don't like murderous regimes, especially those who
| suppress and kill journalists and get away with it
| because all US presidents want to sell them weapons and
| stuff.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I don't think it matters where you are from, just the
| fact you gave the regime tourism and enjoyed the
| oppression of their people through "vacation".
|
| Yes of course the people you saw were happy. If you went
| to tour NK you'd only see happy people and stocked
| grocery stores as well.
|
| On the bright side, you had a nice whataboutism about SA,
| so that's good. I'm glad you haven't supported ALL
| murderous regimes as well, just the one.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not a freedom fighter, I will totally visit any
| murderous country as long as I'm safe. My bucket list
| includes USA, known for killing hundreds of thousands
| civilians when trying to kill their previous business
| partners.
| darkwater wrote:
| You missed to clarify that tourists use pesos convertibles
| which are artificially tied 1:1 to USD (1USD, 1
| convertible) and that are basically what casas and taxi
| drivers accept. But you can totally go to local restaurants
| as a tourist (we did it a few times during our 3 weeks
| stay). And yeah, it can be sad to see how people lives
| there, and many try to flee but as you said makes you think
| about the real, deep impact of consumerism.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Actually that's not entirely correct. There's no rule
| about who uses what, anyone can convert between CUP(the
| official currency) and CUC(the pegged one) at an
| exchange(1:25 exchange rate) and shops would accept both
| but of course using CUC is more convenient when paying at
| a place where a meal costs half the salary of doctor.
|
| I also went to local restaurants, they were extremely
| cheap but way too basic IMHO(However I think there was a
| special kind of a restaurant that is intended to be fancy
| but also for the locals. I was having a proper fish meal
| and a beer for about equivalent of 5$ in CUP at one of
| those). However I was told that I can't take any other
| bus than Viazul(the fancy tourist buses) for travelling
| between cities. Not that I would want to travel in one of
| those anyway, definitely not comfortable or safe to
| travel.
|
| Here is one of the buses that the regular Cubans were
| traveling: https://imgur.com/a/jIynZMZ
|
| For some reason, communists suck at automobile making.
|
| OH! By the way, apparently CUC was discontinued a year
| ago in 1st of January 2021.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_convertible_peso
| lordnacho wrote:
| When I was there, some Cubans offered us a lobster meal.
| Some fisherman had brought them in, and of course they knew
| the tourists could pay for it. So since this seemed to be
| illegal, they arranged for us to drive to their house, and
| then immediately boarded up the garage so our car wasn't
| visible from the street.
|
| Inside we got the lobsters as promised, maybe the only good
| food we had apart from the resorts. It came with some
| extremely stringy mangoes that I don't want to try again.
|
| They also had friends come over to offer cigars and those
| peculiar Cuban shirts, I think taken from a factory. At
| least that was their story.
|
| On the other side, they seemed to have a desire to buy
| clothes, in particular sports clothes like basketball tops.
| We didn't have that with us but we were told they'd swap
| the cigars for a top easily. Even just a shirt like you
| might wear for working in the City would fetch a lot of
| cigars, apparently.
| decafninja wrote:
| I've met and worked with an organization that sort of comes
| from the other side of the equation. They are involved in
| helping North Koreans flee from the country, as well as helping
| those that have already managed to get across the border on
| their own *. The end goal is to get them into South Korea.
|
| This sometimes involves providing the bribes that you speak of.
|
| * Often times for women, there is a second level of escape.
| "Brokers" help them cross the border into China, where they are
| then forced into prostitution, sexual slavery, or "sold" as
| brides. This organization also bribes the various
| peoples/groups (often times gangsters, pimps, etc.) holding
| these North Koreans in bondage in China into letting them go.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Interesting. I guess you speak Korean?
| jimhi wrote:
| Just Chinese and learning Russian now :)
|
| Some of them speak English, others we had a translator.
| pphysch wrote:
| How did you get connected with those refugees, if you don't
| mind my curiosity?
| jimhi wrote:
| An event held by LINK - https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/
|
| They are a nonprofit that helps people escape from North
| Korea
| FpUser wrote:
| Back in the 80s when I was a scientist in the old USSR's
| Academy of Science we've had few Koreans in our lab. I think
| they were studying in the Universities and later had somehow
| managed not to return to Korea.
|
| They were all insanely nice.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Did they prefer USSR to DPRK?
| tigerInATurvy wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if they did. The post-Stalin Soviet
| Union would be a much freer place than North Korea. Here's
| a couple of quotes from Andrei Lankov's* book "Essays on
| Daily Life in North Korea" on how Soviets viewed North
| Korea:
|
| "When I arrived in North Korea for the first time on a
| sunny day in September 1984, I felt perplexed. I came to
| study at the Kim 11 Sung University, as a participant in an
| exchange program between the then-USSR and North Korea. It
| was the first overseas trip of my life, and I was thrilled,
| but I also had some preconceived ideas - and in the first
| hours and days it became clear that the situation did not
| feel like I thought it should.
|
| At that time I was fully aware that I was in what in 1984
| was arguably the world's most brutal dictatorship. The
| Soviet Union was not exactly a democracy itself, but even
| for us, the people from Moscow and Leningrad, North Korea
| stood for the embodiment of inefficiency, brutality and,
| above all, repressive dictatorship. Even the official
| Soviet media sometimes allowed some subtle hints at what
| was going on there."
|
| --
|
| "Quite often the inflated tributes to the Great Leader and
| to the Dear Leader, delivered in a badly edited foreign
| version, produce the opposite of the intended effect on the
| audience, making the North into a laughingstock. I still
| remember how in the 1970s, when I was a teenager in the
| then Soviet Union in my native Leningrad, many barbershops
| stocked copies of Korea magazine, a lavishly illustrated
| North Korean propaganda monthly. What was such a
| publication doing in the barbershops? The answer, I
| suspect, would be quite embarrassing for its editors: it
| was subscribed to in order to amuse the patrons who were
| waiting for a haircut. The North Korean propaganda appeared
| very weird to the Russians - not least because it looked
| like a grossly exaggerated version of their own official
| propaganda. The grotesquely bad Russian translation of the
| texts also provided unintended comical effects."
|
| * - Andrei Lankov is a Russian born in the Soviet Union and
| now lives in Seoul. His books and articles on North Korea
| are very interesting and worthwhile.
| tata71 wrote:
| Seemingly, right?
| FpUser wrote:
| Trying to imply they were the same? Make a wild guess.
| While not a shining citadel of freedom USSR in the 80s was
| infinitely better than North Korea. Their words, not mine.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| No implication at all, I was simply curious. I think in
| the West we assume that the communist experience was bad,
| but I have no frame of reference for this, as I wasn't
| there at the time. Then comes comparing between communist
| regimes, which is farther removed from my experience.
|
| I wish the CIA would've let democratically elected
| communist regimes alone, like Vietnam or certain Latin
| American countries. It just grinds my gears I guess. We
| claim to support democracy, except when we say that
| they're holding it wrong, or doing it wrong. Who are we
| to say that?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| At the very least, the US should be taking responsibility
| for the political and economic fates of those countries
| they "Monroe Doctrine"-ed out of self-determination,
| including economic and stability-oriented military
| support (at a similar level provided to NATO countries,
| Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia) and accepting their
| refugees with open arms.
| stickfigure wrote:
| We have modern Venezuela as a ripe example.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I'm not sure that is the same. Would you consider
| Venezuela a democracy?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for
| profit economic activity and employement than France.
|
| It's meaningfully a socialist economy, just an insanely
| corrupt mixed-market economy with a government pretending
| to be socialist to keep power.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private,
| for profit economic activity and employement than France.
|
| Is that supposed to reflect well on Venezuela or be a
| slight at France? Because Venezuela isn't exactly doing
| to hot in the economics department right now.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not supposed to reflect well on Venezuela, nor
| supposed to be a slight to France. I'm just saying that
| Venezuela is not an especially socialist economy.
|
| Here is a source:
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/private-
| cons...
|
| Compared to:
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/private-
| consump...
|
| As well as
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/venezuela/public-
| consu...
|
| Compared to:
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/public-
| consumpt...
| warning26 wrote:
| Really interesting article!
|
| On a related note, one oddity I often see online (and, once, in
| person) are the die-hard groups of westerners who insist that
| North Korea is actually a paradise on earth and any claim to the
| contrary is some kind of evil capitalist propaganda. Utterly
| baffling, when there are so many sources like this article
| indicating otherwise.
| carabiner wrote:
| Not paradise, but not a prison state like the US describes.
| Just a really poor country like other poor countries. My cousin
| (Korean-Canadian) went on one of those hokey tours in the DPRK
| before they were banned and actually talked to the locals. She
| said they had normal lives of jobs, friends, relationships,
| hobbies, like we all do, just with less material wealth.
| germandiago wrote:
| I have lived in Vietnam for almost a decade. North Korea seems
| to be the equivalent of Vietnam before it started to open its
| economy in the 90s.
|
| I can tell you, that is a hell, but what really makes me more
| angry about all this is how a leading class spoils people
| mercilessly and treat them as animals with no dignity. I am
| talking about North Korea for what I see in articles lately.
| But in Cuba there are similar patterns where everything is
| forbidden and corruption reigns with people trying to survive
| because some others decided they have to live like animals.
|
| Vietnam is way waaaay better than NK and Cuba, even if it has
| its downsides, since its economy has been steadily opened to
| investment.
| vmception wrote:
| I think Vietnam is interesting since is the same single party
| Communist country that we lost to, graduated to state capital
| system like they all do, has authoritative control over all
| facets of life and especially dissidents, but doesnt trigger
| anyone in my circles, doesnt appear in my news negatively,
| and is seen as a travel destination.
|
| Kinda funny is that it really just means they are irrelevant
| as a competitor or market, and that none of us really care
| about governing systems or really care about imagining
| everyone is a victim because they lack self determination for
| their country, only competitors.
| MiroF wrote:
| I definitely lean skeptical of Western sources on things like
| this, but life in NK is obviously pretty awful.
|
| That said, there is essentially no information in this article
| that makes me believe that they actually talked to this person
| as opposed to making up a caricature of how they imagine life
| in NK to be.
| jimhi wrote:
| I talked to several people (not just 1) and am still friends
| with some to this day.
|
| This was an event held by LINK
| (https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/) which I already wrote
| in both the article and this thread. You can go to their site
| or the several talks I linked in this thread to hear their
| stories directly.
| drekk wrote:
| One thing I find more odd is how American audiences treat the
| DPRK while also supporting the continued military puppet state
| that is the ROK. There were also a "lot of sources" supporting
| WMDs in Iraq. When what you're saying is the state department
| narrative it's not going to receive pushback.
|
| The US killed 20% of Koreans on the peninsula and reduced it
| all to rubble. Forgive my skepticism at the "humanitarian
| intentions". Especially when there are financial incentives to
| become a defector [0]
|
| There are also documentaries produced locally [1] and you can
| very well go on Weibo yourself and speak to North Koreans.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39170614 [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You may find it odd because Americans for the most part don't
| actually have a problem with "military puppet states", if
| certain aspects of freedom and human rights are agreeable and
| pass their muster.
|
| Feel free to look at the differences in health and life
| outcomes for North vs South Koreans, while entirely obscuring
| the systems of government, and you will see why the North
| Koreans are reviled throughout most of the rational/non-
| psychopathic world.
| decafninja wrote:
| I've seen this too. Their mantra is usually something along the
| lines of "don't believe everything you see in the corrupt
| Western/South Korean media".
|
| What gives?
|
| I can understand different countries have different pros and
| cons, different people value different things, and something an
| American might find unpalatable might not be considered so bad
| somewhere else.
|
| But North Korea seems to stand out as being one of very few
| countries that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Odd that
| anyone who wasn't born there would willingly and voluntarily
| pledge their allegiance to such a regime.
| germandiago wrote:
| People tend to value different things. If you value hunger
| and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to
| ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some
| are illegal (NK in this case). Or you have to be treated like
| an animal in the customs to even make medicines or food in. I
| have seen this elsewhere, believe me. Those people that live
| from that deserve... I will not say what they deserve, but
| nothing good.
|
| In the meantime, what happens is that the market is not and
| invention, but it "is". That is why there are black markets.
| And they are illegal. So what now? Easy: you have to brive
| all the public workers to get what you want. This is not only
| sad, this is attacking the dignity of the normal people who
| deserve a life.
| morticiansflame wrote:
| Regarding the haircut thing: that's actually a myth:
| https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E
|
| Unfortunately it's myths like this that are shown as
| evidence of the /entire/ narrative around NK being false,
| by those who treat NK as a socialist paradise. There is a
| lot of poor journalism on the topic (see: myth that NK
| claimed to fire a rocket into the sun, myth that NK claimed
| to have found a unicorn, claims that KJU doesn't poop, etc)
| and as such it's easy to simply say that it's all made up.
|
| Certainly not justifying those arguments at all; this just
| shows how easy it is for the less-critical on any side of
| an issue to believe whatever they want because of a few
| counterexamples.
| MiroF wrote:
| > If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North
| Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the
| hair cut you want and some are illegal
|
| Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a
| higher life expectancy than the US.
|
| Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly & misguided.
| germandiago wrote:
| > Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly &
| misguided.
|
| They have basically the same system: more repression and
| strictness in North Korea. But same base: corruption,
| repression, intervention and treating their citizens as
| animals with no dignity.
| germandiago wrote:
| > Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and
| has a higher life expectancy than the US.
|
| That is plainly false. There are lots of cheating in how
| they count that, for example, if a kid is going to have
| any kind of problem, they suggest and try to abort it and
| it does not appear in the count, to give you just one
| single example about how they count life expectation.
| There is lots more that is only make up, such as the
| health care myth and others.
|
| They do have lots of doctors they send abroad and the
| regime gets 70% of their income. When you land abroad, if
| you work like that, they take away your passport so that
| you cannot escape. They do campaigns to donate blood and
| they sell that blood (over 21 million dollars in sales
| for blood that was supposed to be, most of it, an
| altruist action by cuban people in one year). They are
| literally treated as slaves.
|
| Did you see what happened last July? There were riots in
| the streets. They did not have even medicines or food and
| they (the regime and its propaganda) started to talk
| about the embargo (incorrectly called blockage) as the
| problem, when the problem is that those people in that
| odious regime do not let even the food or medicines go
| through without taking a part.
|
| I mean, they take advantage of the anguish of relatives
| that are outside and they smash them. After that I saw
| president Diaz Canel promoting violence against people
| for the protests from his very own words, not a
| translation or similar (I can speak spanish).
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| The life expectancy figures are manipulated:
| https://www.econlib.org/about-that-cuban-life-expectancy/
| MiroF wrote:
| I don't know that having a high abortion rate is
| "manipulation", they are of course going to have a high
| rate relative to the rest of Latin America. I cannot find
| a sourcing for the specific rate of abortion they cite.
|
| The first "manipulation" identified would not impact
| Cuba's position as 1st in life expectancy in Latin
| America, as they concede in their article.
| lisper wrote:
| My guess is that most of the people who profess to believe
| that everything in the DPRK is hunky dory are on the extreme
| political left. The right does not have a monopoly on crazy
| people.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale.
| They seem to be perpendicular.
| simplestats wrote:
| In South Korea, the most pro-north political parties are
| on the left. With the most extremely-pro-north being the
| extreme left.
| lisper wrote:
| I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba
| supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so
| far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And
| I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S.
| standards.)
| MiroF wrote:
| I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the
| quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources
| are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba,
| and that if we were serious about our opposition to
| authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be
| towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like
| Saudi Arabia.
|
| This is very different from the DPRK.
| lisper wrote:
| I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK
| with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with
| respect to the arguments that are advanced for them,
| which in both cases are based on the premise that the
| conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met
| who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on
| the political left. The political right has their own
| version of this argument, except that they focus their
| skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western
| sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog
| whistles without an actual referent other than, "any
| source that disagrees with my position.")
| MiroF wrote:
| I feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and
| is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my
| position." What is it a dog whistle for?
|
| > conventional wisdom
|
| Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of
| a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues
| like these.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, I don't disagree with that. But I will point out
| that the literature of the groups that advocate these
| positions could objectively be called "Western sources"
| since they originate in the West, but obviously those are
| not what the people who produce those sources mean when
| they say that e.g. "Western sources are not to be
| particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba."
|
| It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable
| source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of
| cultural or political bias.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of
| the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but
| for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives
| and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their
| government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest
| of the world.
|
| I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority
| white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and
| left-leaning.
| Clubber wrote:
| I have a 10% rule. ~10-20% of any group is gonna be a
| little nutty about something. 10-20% of the population
| doesn't believe in the moon landing. Similar with the
| flat earth.
|
| They've always existed, just have microphones now.
| trasz wrote:
| How is North Korea left? It's an absolute monarchy, pretty
| much exactly the other side of the political compass.
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| That is, empirically, where forms of government commonly
| labelled as "left" ends up when taken to extremes. North
| Korea is just the most extreme example.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yeah, bullshit. What other "left" government ended up
| with a hereditary monarchy?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Horseshoe theory in action:
|
| Nazi Germany (fascist far right) -> totalitarian
| dictatorship that invades its neighbors and executes
| dissidents
|
| Soviet Union (communist far left) -> totalitarian
| dictatorship that invades its neighbors and executes
| dissidents
| decafninja wrote:
| They declare themselves to be a socialist utopia. If you
| believe what they say at face value, and also believe
| that anything negative said about the DPRK by the Western
| media, etc. to be total lies like some of these people
| being discussed here do, then I guess you could think
| North Korea is a leftist paradise.
| arciini wrote:
| > Be careful where you store your money. One of his puppies
| (obviously Sam kept several for himself) ended up digging up one
| of his stockpiles and started eating his money.
|
| I imagine this isn't a common problem, even for North Korean
| startups, but was funny to read nevertheless.
|
| Interestingly, there's a whole generation of startups that help
| startups store their free cash better than normal bank accounts
| in the US nowadays. The markets!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-06 23:00 UTC)