Hacker News Reader

Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

If they still made the sears catalog I'd suggest the key to starting a peoples' revolt in North Korea would be to airdrop hundreds of thousands of catalogs across the country.

Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.

View on HN

Sometimes I like to indulge a similar fantasy. Only in mine it would be an airdrop of hundreds of thousands of small, hand-crank powered, mesh and satellite enabled, fully encrypt-able communication devices. Upon start-up, the helpful cartoon would explain something like... "you don't have to use this to talk to the outside countries you have been taught to distrust (though we hope this gift helps you see us in a better light), but you can use these to talk to each other privately (without your government knowing it is you doing the talking). Also, if you have relatives outside of North Korea, they are very likely waiting to talk with you in a chat-room or forum. What's a chat-room? Well, glad you asked..."

Yeah, naïve fantasy. But except for very slow strategies (like supporting the thin strands of journalism/information flow inside the country), I can't think of much else that can be done that doesn't include the look of military adventurism and the big risk of needing to rebuild one and a half countries. Even air dropping food directly to towns without the propaganda would risk Seoul.

With the amount of thought-policing that goes on in that country, I can't imagine even beginning to explain to those people their true nature and the nature of pretty much every other human on earth.

The funny thing - you would use mesh enabled device yourself. Actually if there were such cheap devices they would find their way to North Korea somehow. I remember reading article about North Koreans living on border and using mobile phones with Chinese operators' accounts.

How about SkyMall catalogs instead? They're already on the planes ;)

Skymall is just gadgets, no?

Sears catalog was full of every day practical stuff from clothing to household needs, tools, etc.

The US government should have bought millions of leftover catalogs as propaganda to drop on countries like this. No bombs needed.

Sadly it seems they stopped making it in 1993 (strangely well before internet shopping got started)

http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/index.htm

http://images.google.com/search?q=sears+catalog&tbm=isch

It went on much later than 1993. Christmas time always meant going through the sears catalog and circling things that I wanted. I remember being annoyed at all of the clothes I had to skip past to get the toys. This continued well past 2000.

Here: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/nb_10153_12605_NB_Catalogs?adCell...

It looks like they separated it into a few distinct catalogs, which is kindof sad.

Oh no! They'll find out everything they learned about greedy Western capitalist societies is true then...

Airlifting catalogs may be impractical but the gist of your idea is so true! One big factor in USSR's fall, I think, was people's knowledge of the superiority and availability of goods available in the West.

That was even more pronounced in East Germany. (And actually Easterners thought the West to be a much better place, based on all the ads they saw. Everybody watched West German TV.)

And David Hasselhoff singing about freedom, don't forget. He's huge in Germany.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a question of disliking the regime, but people having the power/food/resources to fight back.

How about just dropping food?

Because the regime would simply drop poisoned food in the same packages.

This has been demonstrated in the past to nurture dependance and a sense of entitlement towards the free food.

How about just not interfering?

Edit: To all downvoters: Perhaps this statement is at a wrong place, but yes, these countries (in the Middle East or Africa) might be much better off if the developed countries and China would not be after their natural resources.

It is just hard to not watch the abuse of the population, mass rapes, mass killings, starvation, and so forth and not wish that things could be different then donating $10 via text message to some organization who offers to do something about it. If we could just build a giant wall around North Korea and all of Africa then spend that money on cars, hot wings, and hookers.

I've similarly joked that for the 3 trillion we're spending on Iraq and Afghanistan we could've just flown planes overhead that dropped porn, pop music, fast food, junk food, Xbox/PS3s, iPods/iPads etc. It would've been much cheaper, more effective, and worked much faster.

Who's going to want to be a martyr when you're Tivo'ing something at home microwaving a Hot-Pocket?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com