Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

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Don't forget that it's all fake. I'm not sure the author understands how carefully planned her trip was.

What she shows is not North Korea. What she shows is what the propaganda from the communist party leaders wants foreigners to see. The truth is way less rosy (which, yes, makes it really very scary).

The hotel is fake. The trafic is fake. The shops are fake. She did realize that they do create products that don't have a market but it's worse than that: they create fake malls (well, actually one fake mall, which every single visitor shall see if he wants to see a mall) just to make believe visitors that they have malls.

The entire trip is under supervision and every "delegation" that goes there get to see the exact same things, give or take one or two things.

For example the tramway picture: it's in basically every single movie show from foreign "journalist" who got to get there. I say "journalist" because they're not allowed to do anything on their own: they're constantly accompanied by members from the party.

Poverty is hidden in basically every street where, of course, you're not allowed to go.

I speak several languages so I can watch TV from different countries: it's always the same. At one point me and my girlfriend considered going, so we started watching as much movies as we could about North Korea and we started to realize that all the (totally non-connected) delegations were always doing the exact same visits. After three of them we knew what we were going to see in the fourth one.

What about the truth? Well independent reporters have reported famine and people eating roots during cold winters.

It's really frightening to realize what communism does to people from both a liberty point of view and a poverty point of view.

I'm honestly not sure the author understood what happened to her.

> "Don't forget that it's all fake."

An interesting inverse story:

Years ago, just after the fall of the USSR, the Museum of Flight in Seattle acquired a MiG-21 aircraft on the cheap from the Czech Republic [0]. They had it shipped to the US in pieces, and then flew over a crew of engineers and techs to put it back together. They had a few extra days in the US at the end of the process, so the US crew and the Czech crew agreed that it'd be fun to go fishing.

They stopped by a grocery store on the way out. When the Czech guys saw there weren't any lines and food was plentiful, they got upset. They thought they were being shown propaganda. The group ended up cancelling the fishing trip and spending the whole day just driving all over town and stopping at all sorts of grocery stores, big and small, to prove that they were seeing the real experience of real Americans instead of an elaborate deception.

[0] http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/mikoyan-gurevich-mig-... -- I worked here for several years, and heard the story from multiple sources, including the notes Jim Blue wrote about it.

Hmm, interesting. I read a nearly identical story about Viktor Belenko, a Soviet test pilot who defected to the US with a MiG 25 by way of Japan in the 70s.

Basically while on some sort of mission he booked it across the Sea of Japan, landed unannounced at a Japanese airport, and jumped out of his plane asking that he in his plane be handed over to the Americans. (The Soviets were pretty pissed about this, so the plane was later returned to the Soviet Union... disassembled... in dozens of different crates).

Apparently during part of the process of integrating him into American society his handlers brought him to a grocery store, and he initially became concerned that he was being lied to. IIRC he also requested that he be allowed to spend some time working at a modern American farm.

The luxury of an abundance of food seems to be a common theme.

Do you have a citation for the story, are you sure it really were Czechs? It seems a bit over the top. The Czech Republic is right next to Germany, so even before the fall of the wall, they had the ability to watch Western TV, and also generally were far from as secluded as Russia or even North Korea. And of course in the nineties, they instantly had free press and all, given the Czech Republic was always a very westward-leaning country (Prague Spring and all).

> "are you sure it really were Czechs?"

Yes, it was the Czechs; the specific company was Aero Vodochody [0]. I don't know if the technicians who did the reassembly were typical, or outliers.

I don't know if the full story has been published anywhere. I read it in a binder labelled "MiG acquisition" which was on a shelf in the museum's docent lounge, and I've also heard it from several staff members and volunteers. (Sadly, Jim Blue is no longer with us and therefore cannot confirm directly [0].)

[0] http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2003723931_blueobit27... - mentions the MiG 21 at the bottom of the page

I got the idea that the author does understand quite well. From the very first paragraphs:

#1 Caveat: It's impossible to know how much we can extrapolate from what we saw in Pyongyang to what the DPRK is really like. Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments. We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other).

She also compared the experience to the Truman Show and interpreted even relatively innocuous things like a computer lab full of rather robotic "students" as an "e-Potemkin village". I'm not sure she could have sounded much more sceptical about what she was shown without punctuating every sentence with political asides, and frankly her account had more credibility because she didn't do that.

Those genuine human moments were not genuine, but otherwise yeah

  | It's really frightening to realize what communism

Communism is such a loaded term that it's pretty meaningless at this point. China is also 'communist,' but people aren't eating roots to survive the winters. North Korea is a dictatorship under the guise of communism/socialism.

North Korea is not communist it is Juche. All reference to Marxism-Leninism was dropped in the revised 1998 constitution.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/10/north-korea-lo...

North Korea is not communist it is Juche.

No, it's communist. It's just called Juche. Note that nothing about how things are actually done in NK changed when they changed their constitution. Note also that constitutions are essentially meaningless in a dictatorship, since they provide few, if any, real constraints on the dictator. Which, after all, is why we call them dictators.

Looks like the fall of most of the communist states has gotten the regime a bit nervous. Can't have any of the little people thinking they might like to end their Socialist Paradise.

> No, it's communist.

It isn't anything Marx would call communist. North Korea guarantees protection of private property in its constitution and it is a member of the world intellectual property organization.

A communist society shouldn't have an antithesis between mental and physical labor or intellectual private property. It should be a society where everyone is free to work and collaborate on whatever creative projects they want to.

If you take the reality of the situation instead of the claims of the officials, then there has never been a communist country in the world and certainly not in NK.

The same can be said of a free market, but that shouldn't stop us from comparing mostly free market economies with mostly communist economies.

There has never been anything close to a communist economy. Communism means there are such advanced productive forces and automation technology that there is no antithesis between mental and physical labor:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! - comrade Karl Marx

BR Myers makes a good case in The Cleanest Race that North Korea is closer to a racist-fascist state along the lines of (pre-)WWII-era Japan. In brief, the internal propaganda sets the leaders as the mother (yes, they use "mother", not "father") of the North Korea people, who are so pure/innocent a race that they need protection from their naiveté.

Some North Koreans have never heard of "Juche."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...

China has had a free market system since the early 80s. They still have a few state owned companies and a tighter grip on some industries but it is nothing near communism. As a matter of fact, the rate of entrepreneurship in China exceeds that of the US [0].

[0] http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2010/sb20100...

Agreed - China has a Communist government, but with a mostly Capitalist economy. Deng Xiaoping's 1992 catchphrase - "To get rich is glorious" (致富光荣) - unleashed a wave of personal entrepreneurship that continues belie any socialist tendencies. That said, the state's grip on industry, and barriers to entry for business, are still high.

Same goes for Vietnam, if not more so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam#Economy

I was in HCMC/Saigon recently ... it seemed that almost everyone was working in some private business or another, often small family run businesses.

No, communism (& socialism) actually means something (planned economy, state owns everything). It's just some right wing politicians (esp. in the USA) who have overused the term to mean free health care and not being mean to the gays that have ruined the term.

Meanwhile in Spain -- a modern, secular, wealthy, western, capitalist country -- some people really are eating roots to survive the winter.

Do you live in Spain like I do?

Why did you invented that lie?.

We are not in a good economical situation, this means problems getting a house or good car but not being able to eat...a complete different story on one of the biggest food producers in the world.

We are also not very capitalist, in fact we are socialist, more than 50% of the economy is controlled by public institutions, and the biggest source of problems.

In real capitalism bad companies burn and die. Those losses had been socialized and backed by the state, witch is called statism, not capitalism.

I do indeed live in Spain. To check I wasn't lying I just looked out of my window and sure enough, there's someone rooting through the rubbish bin looking for food. For "one of the biggest food producers in the world" a lot of people sure are hungry.

You guys don't have food banks or homeless shelters?

Yes, some.

I realize that communists don't like the fact that Cuba ain't exactly a place where freedom rules king, the fact that North Korea is an utter failure, the fact that the soviet did sent opponents to communism die in Siberia (when it wasn't downright murdering) and the fact that Che Guevara was an homophobic and racist schizophrenic slaughterer...

Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

And it's only since we can write that China is "communist" between quotes that they're starting to escape poverty. And people in small villages in China are still not exactly living on very high standards so...

  | the fact that Che Guevara was an homophobic and racist
  | schizophrenic slaughterer...

You're making an assumption that: 1) I am a supporter of Communism and 2) I'm a supporter of Che Guevara. I'm not really seeing where you're getting this idea from.

You're also seemingly making an argument that communism is bad because Che Guevara is bad.

  | Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery
  | and poverty.

Care to expand on this for us with some analysis? References to articles / papers by others would be acceptable too.

  | And people in small villages in China are still not
  | exactly living on very high standards so

- Did these villages have a high standard of living prior to Mao's revolution? If not, do you view the failure of communism as a failure to raise their standards above the previously low levels? If so, then what do you feel are the causes (related to communism) for their drop in standards?

- India is full of examples of abject poverty. Do you view India as a failure too?

> Do you view India as a failure too?

You realise this is a platitude, right?

I hear this all the time, but in virtually all situations its irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Historically, communist countries have had terrible standards of living; this is extremely well documented; some (actually, just china as far as I know) have stepped away from an entirely government controlled economy to a government directed economy, and that seems to be working out for them pretty well.

Being a democracy doesn't mean you'll have a great economy and a high standard of living. There are plenty of examples of that not working as well.

...but we've got a few more examples of that working out, than we do of communist regimes working out, historically. You think perhaps there might be a bit of causation there?

Certainly, and importantly, this is totally irrelevant to India.

  Historically, communist countries have [..]

never existed. The USSR, China, Cuba, North-Korea: none of those countries is, or has ever been, communist. If they called themselves communist, it was to legitimize themselves.

In what ways are they not-ever communist? This sounds a lot like a no-true-Scotsman claim, but I'm genuinely curious.

Marxism and Leninism disagree on what communism is. The major difference being the existence of a ruling party.

Also, if i call myself "Chinese," (I am not of Chinese descent) can I defend my claim by invoking the no-true-scotsman fallacy?

> Certainly, and importantly, this is totally irrelevant to India.

India is a huge (by population) with a similar start point to china also a huge (by population) country, they have some similarities in their culture, but a large defining difference is their way of government, and there reactions to "The West". It isn't totally irrelevant, and meaningful comparisons can be made, but they must be considered.

> Historically, communist countries have had terrible standards of living; this is extremely well documented

You mean "Historically (Except China)"... That's like excluding the US when talking about Democracy.

> ...but we've got a few more examples of that working out, than we do of communist regimes working out

Actually I think you'll find the poorest nations are mostly democratic (of some form). [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage...

> That's like excluding the US when talking about Democracy.

Speaking of which, western countries, with very few exceptions, aren't democracies. They are representative governments. Well, that's if what I call "democracy" is what the Athenians had in mind a few millennia back. Remember, the custom there was for citizens to vote for their rules, not their rulers. Some people did take charge sometimes, but they had to be picked by random trial, not elections.

Come to think of it, Alan Kay did not have Java in mind when he coined the term "OO". And Karl Marx certainly did not have USSR nor North Korea in mind. And so on.

You're all agreeing on the facts here, which are: every government that have thus far claimed to be "communist" where mostly dictatorships where only the establishment had any wealth to speak of. And this outcome is undoubtedly very different from the ideals of those who used the term before that.

The only contentious point here is the definition of the word "communism". Does it apply to the ideal, or to the outcome? Well, who cares?

Unless…

…someone is trying to push arguments behind our back by using a definition over the other. The actually important question is not a matter of definition, but a matter of prediction: what chance do we have to properly implement communism-the-ideal, while avoiding communism-the-outcome?

Choosing a definition for "communism" does not help us on this one. It only shows our respective opinions.

> You mean "Historically (Except China)"... That's like excluding the US when talking about Democracy.

I think you should do some background reading. The history of the standard of living in China is especially well documented.

You mean it improved dramatically since the beginning of communism? What's your point?

  | You realise this is a platitude, right?

So is pointing out that there are some small villages in China that live in poverty.

> India is full of examples of abject poverty. Do you view India as a failure too?

India's poverty exists because of the massive corruption & inefficiency in various levels of the government. For eg: Tons of grains rot in government storages. Not many in the public service are held accountable.

The Government theoretically allots for those below the Poverty line, but they never get the aid they're supposed to get.

India is far from a failure. Because Information/Education is not limited nor restricted.

restricted or not, as long as there are still 1.5 million kids < 5 years of age dying every year, its still a failure[0]. Sure, things may be getting better, but you have to acknowledge the present for what it is.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/India-tops...

> Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

Capitalism has created dangerous situations for workers worse then slavery! Countless people (including children) have died of work related injuries in capitalist societies throughout history.

When a slave dies well working, the master is disappointed that he just lost a valuable piece of property. On the other hand, a capitalist boss doesn't give a fuck if one of his workers dies, he can just pay someone else to do the job for the same price.

In 1833, the city of Lancashire reported deaths of a total of 401 workers under the age of 11 and 2,292 child laborer’s between the ages of 11 and 16. Factories were hot, crowded, and distracting with no safety regulations or protective equipment and child workers would frequently get caught and die in machines. The capitalist bosses didn't give a fuck that children were dying in their machines, children are replaceable.

This was the reality in the 19th century, before there were any safety laws whatsoever, and when Marx was analyzing these things. There wasn't any sort of socialism in North Korea, Cuba, or China when Marx was alive so they cannot be used to criticize his original ideas.

Do you really want to get into body counts? Cause I'm pretty sure communism wins that battle. Don't worry, I already know that no true Scotsman...

> Do you really want to get into body counts?

Yes, I do. Should we start with the first revolutionary socialist, Babeuf, who was executed by the guillotine or should we go all the way back to the primitive communist tribes that existed before states and classes that were massacred and enslaved by invading armies?

But... but... but... Capitalism!

Okay, count up another 10 million dead bodies and we can start comparing to a single soviet famine.

From what you say, you obviously have no idea what communism is. Not USSR, nor Northern Korea, nor China, etc.. they were never communist countries, not even a "form" of communism. Communism, in its origin form, means no government, gift-economy, direct democracy(as opposed to representative) and workers controlling the means of production.

"A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions." [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#Etymology_and_termino...

> Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

i don't think you can blame the problems faced by those countries to communism. The idea of communism is a good one, but the execution is always poor - reason being that at some point, someone is going to be able to grab power, and the whole system filled with corruption and/or systemic mismanagement (again, due to some form of corruption). Plus, communism sounds like a better name than tyranny, and so the tyrants call themselves communists.

"real" communism, one which is say, managed my an AI, with no one small group of humans in power, is probably going to be fair and equal. I'd like to see if that could work.

> "real" communism, one which is say, managed my an AI, with no one small group of humans in power, is probably going to be fair and equal.

Any rational agent, whether biological or artificial, A) possesses a set of preferences, and B) seeks to maximize its preferences. If an AI obtains its set of preferences for maximization from a group of privileged programmers or creators, then a small group of humans is still in power in your scenario. If the AI is responsible for deriving its own set of random preferences, then it is effectively operating as another individual in society with no deterministic guarantees on behavior, and to grant it governing authority is equivalent to unchecked dictatorship.

Our AI programs don't need to have their own preferences. Each rational agent can be assigned an assistant AI which will derive its preferences from the agent's already existent preferences.

It'll be like everyone has an AI genie, granting them wishes!

I believe by AI, he actually means oracle.

> "real" communism, one which is say, managed my an AI, with > no one small group of humans in power, is probably going to > be fair and equal. I'd like to see if that could work.

The problem with communism is the idea that there is a set of objectively ideal decisions that can be made to the greater good of everyone, be it by some AI or a committee.

It's not only impossible to find these ideal policies, they don't exist. Policy is always a compromise between different competing goals, progress is made in small steps and adjustments.

There is no great ideology from which perfect decisions can be deducted, there is no perfect system. The assumption of a perfect system leads to the idea of sacrifices on the way to it, which leads to a lot of suffering.

The ability to incorporate different preferences and different means of achieving them is the major advantage of open societies.

>Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

This statement is at best unprovable and at worst meaningless. Communism is a theoretical form of economic/social organization (like capitalism) and has never been purely implemented (like capitalism). The aim of communism is to create a completely classless society in which private ownership is not a thing, i.e. the concept of slavery wouldn't make sense, impossible by definition. Unless you have a society without stratification, you do not have a communist society.

You should revise your statement to something like "some societies partially implemented elements of a communist philosophy and ended up impoverished, with some members of said society ending up enslaved".

> Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

I think you are confusing communism with capitalism... The nations that at any point had slavery, were capitalist. Capitalism itself can only exist in "surplus value" scenario, meaning someone/thing is being exploited.

abject poverty, only exists because abject wealth exists. Abject wealth is a result of capitalism.

"The nations that at any point had slavery, were capitalist"

You're wrong. And missing about 5 thousand years of history.

"abject poverty, only exists because abject wealth exists"

Yes, that's why the "leaders" of North Korea are abjectly wealthy. Like the leaders of Romania, for example.

>You're wrong

Well, they certainly weren't communist, in any case. By definition slavery cannot exist in an actual communist society, since such societies are completely classless and the only form of ownership is common.

I agree I'm wrong in the context of history of the civilisation, but correct in terms of "the history of communism, and capitalism".

If you want to include feudalism in there I'm happy to have the discussion on what feudalism is closer to: Communism or Capitalism.

Well said. The Scotsman left the building long, long ago. Someone should send the few remaining communists that memo.

Well she did write,

“They made sure to show us the American-style fast food restaurant, though their timing appeared to be off: the place was shuttered when we arrived. Workers scrambled to put on aprons and turn on the lights.”

and

“it's like The Truman Show, at country scale.”

and

“Inside, we were shown through study rooms like the one above, maybe 60 people diligently at desks. Were they bussed in for our benefit? Were any of them actually reading?”

and

“In a fantastic bit of timing, as we exited the train, the station's power cut out. The commuters around us immediately pulled out flashlights, which they presumably carry all the time.”

and

“The Kim Il Sung University e-Library, or as I like to call it, the e-Potemkin Village [...] No one was actually doing anything.”

and

“Did our handlers honestly think we bought it? Did they even care? Photo op and tour completed, maybe they dismantled the whole set and went home.”

So, it seems pretty evident that she had her skeptic hat on throughout the trip.

In the article, this line really hit me, "Are we morally required to intervene"?

I'm not sure. Here's a slightly open documentary (around the 44 minute mark) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaqbVSEPfRc

Even with all the brainwashing, they somehow feel the nationalism to fight through the "bad times" and find time to feel happy with smaller things in life. I've always felt happiness is differential. To a North Korean kid, happiness from a sumptuous meal is equivalent to getting an iPad in the US? The Kims are enforcing the "Ignorance is bliss" ideology by censorship. Is that morally correct, I'm not sure but it's something we can ponder about.

There is a documentary on YouTube where Shane Smith (of Vice mag) visits North Korea. He is put up in a fake hotel, given fake ceremonial dinners, fakely entertained in fake karaoke places, and so on. Seems like the same situation as the author of this article, the difference being Smith is explicitly not under any illusions of authenticity.

Link to documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24R8JObNNQ4

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