Hacker News Reader

I don't know why you'd be surprised that they have skilled developers and modern computers. North Korea has a state-funded hacking and phishing operation that generates $2 billion, which represents a pretty significant part of their $35 billion GDP.

Being proper laundered currency available for whatever international purchases it's punching way above its $2B weight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_39

Did you know a country’s political system says nothing about how smart its citizens are? Education levels can differ, sure. But in IT especially, almost all learning material is freely available online. All you really need is motivation. And autocratic regimes have plenty of ways to create that.

North Korea doesn't have access to the open internet, so no learning materials are 'freely available' online. All computer access is gated through the countries own locked down Linux distro 'Red Star OS', and all internet access is blocked.

There are effective North Korean hacking teams. They seem to operate from China, but one assumes that there are ways to train North Koreans in this stuff before sending them abroad to do the work.

I will agree that for most people in North Korea access to the outside internet is limited, but your claim that "All computer access is gated" is a stronger one, that I haven't seem evidence for.

Also, we know that Red Star OS exists, but I haven't seen any information about it's actual use. I can imagine it's used in certain sectors (e.g. education or certain ministries), but if you have information about it's usage I'd be interested to see that.

My gut feeling is that there is probably still a lot of cracked windows PCs also used in industry, but I have no evidence for that either. This is just based on how in my experience China works, and the fact that there is some business exchange between North Korea and China.

It’s still freely available online. So their government can pick and choose what they think is necessary for educating their hackers / programmers / developers.

I was a whole lot better at reading the manual before the internet .

Dude, computers and internet have been worldwide for 20+ years. Even war zones have internet and modern computers. The only place that doesn't is Cuba which is physically separated from the rest of humanity by geography and embargoes.

Hello from Cuba. We do have internet and modern computers.

> I was surprised to see that they weren't like, say, 20 years behind or something

That actually says more about what the Western "First World" media feeds their people, that the rest of the world is 20 years behind and stuff :')

Maybe 10, maybe some places, sure. In terms of social progress and basic rights, hell there are places that are 50 or even 200 years behind (see Afghanistan's treatment of women for example)

But tech-wise, I was surprised when I visited some parts of the Middle East and Asia; almost everything was available online, paid for electronically, clean and effective mass transport, walkable and safe cities..

> media feeds their people, that the rest of the world is 20 years behind and stuff

Well western or pretty media having no access to the country pretty much guarantees that everything they might be reporting is a mix of speculation and outdated information. Doing the best you can with whatever data is available doesn’t seem like an unreasonable approach.

> see Afghanistan's treatment of women for example

Or much of the the “advanced” gulf states..

> That actually says more about what the Western "First World" media feeds their people, that the rest of the world is 20 years behind and stuff :')

More like, "western" media rarely talks about most countries not undergoing a crisis, somehow relevant or close culturally. A British paper will talk about the US and Western EU countries because they're relevant to Britons and close partners; it will also cover Ukraine and Gaza because they're undergoing crisis and relevant. It won't talk all that much about the war in Mali or the local politics of Tashkent. French media will cover former colonies like Mali more due to the shared language and the presence of large amounts of people of that descent in France, but won't cover e.g. what's happening in Sri Lanka day to day.

So the little that the average "westerner" hears about North Korea is the occasional weird case, or when they make missile tests / international threats. The state of urbanism in Pyongyang is irrelevant to most people, so there is little reporting on it.

> But tech-wise, I was surprised when I visited some parts of the Middle East and Asia; almost everything was available online, paid for electronically, clean and effective mass transport, walkable and safe cities..

Wildly location dependent.

> clean and effective mass transport

Big Chinese cities, big former Soviet cities, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan. Everywhere else in Middle East and Asia doesn't have effective mass transport there might be a few metro lines like in Dubai, or be rapidly expanding like Hanoi, Riyadh, but nothing else comparable to the gold standards of e.g. Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, London, Paris.

> walkable and safe cities..

Which cities were walkable? I have yet to visit a developing country where walking wasn't barely an afterthought with little to no sidewalks, no priority for pedestrians, etc. While it's definitely better in some countries compared to others, it's really not the norm in "the Middle East and Asia". It is in most developed countries in those regions, like Japan, China, South Korea, UAE, Saudi (and the last two have temperatures that make it challenging).

> almost everything was available online

My favourite is the countries in the middle. E.g. Sri Lanka, where the railways are stuck in the 1950s from when the British left, everything is on paper (schedules, tickets, etc.) and you have to go to a train station to buy a ticket... but a lot of other things are quite digital. Everywhere has 4G coverage, everyone has a phone with data. But some things are literally decades behind.