On the Spot with Kim Jong-il | Hacker News Reader

On the Spot with Kim Jong-il

boston.com

51 pointsbloch30 comments

I posted this a few days ago but didn't get any attention:

A Year in Pyongyang: The fascinating account of a British guy who spent a year in North Korea working as a literary reviser for their totalitarian government http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1178719

I've started reading the book since then and it really paints a full and seemingly realistic picture of N Korea.

Great link (though it should come with a procrastination warning...) I've just spent over an hour browsing through it. It's definitely a different perspective.

I read that book a long time ago.

I always found it interesting how he was constantly in fear of getting ripped off by the government, and moreover, how the North Korean people he worked with never really talked to him about how they felt.

I found the story about the girl who was impregnated by an African student and forced to have an abortion to be incredibly fascinating.

I've always been fascinated by the pictures people manage to get out of North Korea. This Flickr account is home to an incredible collection of photos inside of Pyongyang http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/collections/7215760... and out in the country http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/collections/7215760...

"I see you have some cows here."

"Ah yes. Flour. Very good."

"Excellent work on this bucket. But why orange? Ha ha ha!"

"What is this, a fishery for ants?"

Gotta love how the only photo where he is smiling is where he is holding a bottle of vodka :)

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi...

Explains why he wears shades even indoors?

Christopher Hitchens wrote an interesting piece on NK recently http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/pagenum/all/

I was wondering if he wears shades so you can never know for sure if it's him or a stand-in.

Given how consistently they have famine over there, they must have trouble fattening up his body doubles enough.

He looks quite skinny, actually.

I just remember a lot of pictures of him looking rather pot-bellied. It probably wasn't the most tasteful remark but you have to wonder about chubby dictators who rule starving countries.

I have no problem whatsoever with untasteful remarks about, among all people, Kim Jong Il. I was only quite surprised how skinny he looked. I also had different memories. Maybe it’s that ugly coat?

He's been very ill recently. Nobody knows exactly with what, but the first videos of him after the illness showed him looking absolutely just-off-of-life-support.

The belief is that he had a stroke, if you look at one of his ungloved hands in the photos, it looks swollen and not entirely functional, which jives with what the analysts are guessing.

It's soju, and he smiles in multiple photographs. Kim Jong Il also likes shoes, plastic buckets, and large control panels.

I find these pictures sad. There's a lot of people working like slaves in NK for whom these pictures document the most important day in their lives. Awash in propaganda, many of them probably sincerely believe they're engaged in a noble mission of freedom. Sometimes I wonder if Kim himself believes he's the only think holding it together.

The regime in North Korea seems to have a desperate need to convince others of its legitimacy, unlike, say, that in Myanmar where the junta holds the country in a equally tight grip but seems to shun all outside scrutiny. Whereas any educated person can recognize Kim Jong Il, even Google has only a few photographs of Myanmar's leader.

(in case you were wondering: http://1763coventry.com/burmeses/index.php/TOC_-_Leaders_%26...)

If you're looking for some more insight into this country, watch this video set over the weekend:

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-...

A real eye opener.

I'm fascinated by North Korea. I think these pictures say a lot. The details are interesting... close-up shots, framed without showing much context. Practically everybody has a pad of paper. Intriguing stuff.

Yeah, it is very interesting. There is definitely a formula to these pictures. Very tidy environment, inspecting a line of product, a dozen people watching in the background, and the same damn coat in every shot.

What I really wonder is Kim Jong-il "in" on the staged-ness of these shots? Or does he just operate with a different perception of the world because things are always presented to him in such a tidy manner?

I'm sure if you zoomed out you would see a whole lot of nothing. No more than a handful more cows or pigs or shoes or cookies that are in the shots we see here. NK is just a big vacant husk of a nation.

He has to be aware of that, at least.

When I saw the pictures of Kim Jong-il surrounded by a store filled with fresh fruit while his citizens starve, I was reminded of the final years of the rule of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. In Ceauşescu's case, to some extent it appears his lieutenants went to great lengths to present him with a sanitized view of the state of his country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceauşescu#Tensions

I'm curious if this is also the case in North Korea.

Team America ruined any chance of me taking this guy seriously.

Some of those photos look photoshopped. In #10, his glasses are broken, whereas in others (14, 19) he looks very out of place. In many, his hat stand out particularly.

I recall there were several techniques for photoshop detection. Let's bust them out?

Nothing too odd: http://i.imgur.com/INgMn.jpg

Why photoshop when you can stage?

Lest we be too proud of our ability to detect the forced, artificial nature of these photographs, this link from the 'Big Picture' comment thread should be considered:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/obama_being_forced_to_l...

(Our photo op rituals aren't that much better. US photographers show a lot more creativity in composition, though.)

That's an extremely superficial comparison.

If I was a stand-in for some politician that was about my height and weight, I would definitely wear sunglasses. Even at night.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_i...

An excellent (and short) analysis of North Korea from Banyan, the Economist's excellent new Asia columnist.

In some ways North Korea is one of the few countries that feels really foreign to me nowadays, but I think that might be because there is so little verifiable information about it.

Regardless, looking at these photos I only think: Kim is looking really old.

I'm struck by how old they all are. I bet the younger generation is just waiting for them to all die off.

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