The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of his high school teachers

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/08/12/the_secret_history_of_kim_jong_il?hidecomments=yes&page=full

by cynest • 15 years ago

631 154 15 years ago

jrubinovitz2• 15 years ago

As a computer science student, I don't really have time to read as much material unrelated to Computer Science as I would like, so this was quite a treat. Thanks for bravely humanizing Kim Jung Il and North Korea, and reminding us why we need to change the world, Mr. Kim Hyun Sik (author).

askar_yu2• 15 years ago

"As a computer science student, I don't really have time to read as much material unrelated to Computer Science as I would like..."

I was a CS student who had a very alike mindset and I regret that. In hindsight I wish I had not let the "being a CS student" mentality serve as an excuse in my lack of literacy in other important subjects.

jrubinovitz2• 15 years ago

It's more like having to take 19 credits a semester to graduate within my budget and working 20+ hours a week does not leave me much time for unassigned reading, but I will take that suggestion to heart whenever possible (hopefully during this winter break).

protomyth• 15 years ago

I would recommend you spend a fair amount of time reading material on human behavior such as biographies and histories. It will save you a lot of time in designing systems and processes for people.

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

As a counterpoint, I would encourage you to absorb things that are utterly useless, such as poetry. One must remember that not everything needs a practical function to justify itself. "Enriching the human spirit" sounds handwavey, but it's a very real and important idea.

fufulabs• 15 years ago

It boggles my mind how little anyone, inside or outside, has done to change North Korea.

Maybe i am just ignorant of how difficult it is or the attempts done.

bitops3• 15 years ago

It is easy to say that North Korea should change. What is difficult is articulating the type of change that one would like to see occur and how to implement it.

Should Kim Jong-Il have been ousted a la Saddam Hussein in Iraq? How dangerous would that have been, considering that North Korea has nuclear arms? What to do in case of a conflict that spills over into neighboring countries? What would China's take on all of it be? Would they stand idly by or back up their Communist cousin?

Once the dictator is gone, what do you do? Let the military take over and potentially let it establish a junta government, Myanmar-style? Or do you try to install democracy forcibly? Would the right thing to do be to hand North Korea over to South Korea, integrating the two countries by shotgun wedding?

The complexities quickly exponentiate. Consider the cultural shock of the North Koreans once they're introduced to modern South Korean culture alone. If German re-unification is any indicator, putting together two halves of a country that have been split into Communism and western capitalism is not a trivial task.

Also consider the cult of personality built up around Kim Jong-Il. The situation in N. Korea could quickly become explosive once people realize the deceit they've been living in.

So it's difficult thing to do, just by itself. All the econo-political ramifications just make it that much harder.

InclinedPlane2• 15 years ago

Nuclear weapons barely change the equation. The best estimate is that North Korea could begin firing around 10,000 artillery shells per minute into densely populated suburbs areas around Seoul on a moment's notice. Even if through some masterful and historic level of effort we managed to shut down those artillery bombardments or evacuate the targeted areas in a mere half an hour that still leaves hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and huge numbers of homes and businesses destroyed. It would be a destruction on the scale of a natural disaster such as the earthquake off Japan earlier this year. Add in the very real possibility of North Korean nuclear weapons landing on Seoul, Tokyo, Taiwan or maybe even the US mainland and that starts focusing your thinking about how worthwhile it would have to be to depose the North Korean regime.

asimeqi2• 15 years ago

Coming from a country that had it almost as bad as North Korea, I can say that nothing can be done from outside and little can be done from inside.

There is only a handful of people that are in charge in North Korea that can try to effect some kind of change. But even if suddenly one day they wake up with the best of intentions and all cleared up about where they would want to go, i.e. to achieve some sort of South Korean democracy, it will be extremely hard to improve anything in a short amount time (and by short time I mean around 10 years).

Basically the people living there today are screwed. Ideologically they have grown up to expect everything handed down from the state. How can the state hand down everything if it doesn't own everything? Economically, maybe 90% of economic activity is useless. In a free economy all of them would be closed. How would you cope with 90% unemployment?

GFischer• 15 years ago

You remind me of a National Geographic article on post-communist Russia, and how the elderly wanted to go back, since the new system was much harsher on them.

And post-communist Russia is an example of what could happen in North Korea, replacing one group of tyrants with a mafia. Only N.K. doesn't have the kind of natural resources Russia has. Maybe Albania might be a better example.

nknight3• 15 years ago

> How would you cope with 90% unemployment?

Special Economic Zones are the name of the game, and yeah, it'd take decades to transform the whole economy -- China's still working on it. But the standard of living can start increasing almost immediately with the combination of trade and increased aid once they stop being an international pariah.

"Screwed" is on a spectrum, and you can start moving up immediately, if slowly.

louislouis• 15 years ago

Well there's only so many dictators we can knockout at any one time. We've been targeting those oil rich countries in the past decade where the ROI will be worth our while. The minerals of North Korea do look pretty sweet but we need some time to refill our barracks and sort out our own economic mess first. Don't worry though we've got economic sanctions in place against NK already so they won't be developing much.

tintin• 15 years ago

There was once a documentary about the mass games. It was very strange to see that a lot of people were very honored to play for the big leader. They had little to eat, had to work hard, but they were doing it all for the big leader.

If you can't (are not allowed) to look over the fence, you won't know that the grass is greener on the other side.

bitops3• 15 years ago

That movie "A State of Mind" - a really excellent documentary film.

thaumaturgy2• 15 years ago

There has been a lot of work put towards North Korea -- some of it we know about, and probably some other that we don't. For example, there have been numerous attempts recently to draw them into nuclear disarmament talks, and a lot of aid has been provided as a carrot for those talks.

But, from a cold, inhumane, and strictly logical perspective, North Korea is a problem that will probably solve itself. Assuming that most of the non-mainstream stuff that I read and hear about it is true (and I'm a little unsettled at even wondering that, let alone specifying "non-mainstream"), North Korea is badly starved for resources.

When your population is starving, when your media singularly carries fictional programming about your state and leaders, when your education is tightly authoritarian, you are less likely to produce the geniuses needed to solve engineering challenges like accurate long-range guidance systems.

Ordinarily, a resource-starved state would devolve into desperation; in North Korea's case, I'm not sure whether to expect that, because the entire state seems to be so uniquely dependent upon the whims and notions of a single individual -- its party leader at the time. If Kim Jong-Un continues to place pride before population, then it's likely that the state will collapse in our lifetimes in a mostly nonviolent way. If, on the other hand, he decides to try to take some kind of action, he'll eventually be forced into a game of poker where everyone at the table knows that he's got the weakest hand. Although he could certainly do a lot of damage on the way out -- mostly to neighboring South Korea and Japan -- he could not destroy the Earth, and he'd be faced with an immediate and deadly counterstrike from more capable nations.

It certainly is a terrible situation for the poor souls born into that country. Still, sometimes the best strategy is to simply wait out your opponent and let him starve to death, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this was in fact the Western strategy.

hcho• 15 years ago

You are aware of the fact that NK is PRC's puppet state, aren't you? NK will live on as it is, till PRC ceases tp support it.

ocdprogrammer6• 15 years ago

I don't understand why all this urge in the "west" to change the north korea ? Not only that you believe all the western propaganda against NK but you have no doubts that you definitely know whats better and best for NK. Yes, you have no doubts that the west should rob them like they did with Irak and "set them free" and give them the shitty innefective democracy which strangely works only to make the western rich richer and the rest rich enough to not die.Why doesn't the west mind his damn business ? Why this arrogance that you know what others had to do ? If the US/Europe is a paradise, why are the poverty/corruption/unhappiness levels so high ? Why are u still in denial about what's really going on home but u have no doubts about whats really going on in NK and China ? This is some incomplete and not structured rant but still i make a case that the west and it's cool kids are arrogant, doubtless and biased like hell and work involuntarily to fulfill their invisible master's plan (again and forever ?).

middus• 15 years ago

I guess you're trolling, but anyway. All politics aside, the people in NK are hungry. Hungry as in "I don't have anything to eat". There's no doubt about the fact that the Western World managed to get this right.

pyre3• 15 years ago

  > I don't understand why all this urge in the "west" to
  > change the north korea

Going in and 'freeing' a country is never as simply as it seems. That said, North Korea is not in a very good situation currently. There is a very real temptation to 'swoop in' and 'save' them. The idea being that rather than waiting for (possibly) decades for change to happen (and all of the suffering along the way), we could instantly change things for the better. The problem is that this drastic change is tantamount to revolution, and revolutions are never easy or clean.

Assume for a second that the US was perfect, and we could somehow attempt to impart this to the North Koreans. The population of North Korea has under gone over a decade of anti-US/anti-West propaganda. A not-inconsequential number of these people are going to violently resist US/Western involvement in North Korea. Even if we were able to produce irrefutable proof that all of the propaganda was a lie, there would be enough people that would violently refuse to believe even the truth that was right in front of them to produce significant turmoil.

forgottenpaswrd• 15 years ago

It is not possible to change North Korea in the short term. Like any communist society, everybody has learned to live according to the rules. It takes generations to change that, and even then it is difficult.

The learnt that the state provides everything, that they are nothing without the state. People over 20 years old are not going to learn ever to live by their own means. They need communism.

tikhonj2• 15 years ago

I think saying that they need communism--or even that they would be worse off without it--is a little much. While the state provides everything, that's just a relative measure: in an absolute sense, it does not provide very much at all. I think that they would be better off without communism even in view of the inevitable difficulties transitioning.

spodek7• 15 years ago

I wrote an extended series on North Korean strategy that begins by explaining the current incredible stability. Until Kim Jung Il died, since 1945 a country the world disliked and actively tried to change had two (!) leaders, father and son.

It begins here -- http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-strategy-preview

I believe a strategic systems perspective reveals why that stability is so durable, but reveals little opportunity to change it. I can tell you what won't work -- military, diplomacy, aid, and sanctions. The most effective agent of change so far is the smuggling of dvds into the country, which reveal how different the outside world from the government propaganda.

(by the way, I'm in the process of making an e-book out of it. If you're willing to read it critically and give constructive criticism, I'll send you an advance copy)

mattparlane• 15 years ago

little hint:

javascript:$('body').css('margin', '0 200px');

MrMatters• 15 years ago

Hmm. How long has Chrome removed the 'javascript:' when you paste into a URL bar? I assume it's to prevent users from blindly running JS, but is there a way to disable it?

csomar• 15 years ago

You can use the console (CTR+ALT+I)

harlanlewis• 15 years ago

I actually rather like that 'remove on paste', default to educating/transparency instead of blindly running. Manually typing the prepended 'javascript:' works fine.

Don't see any settings to disable (even in chrome://flags).

Chrome's Javascript Console would also work.

nathanhammond• 15 years ago

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527530

Conversation in that thread implies May or June of this year (2011).

Dobbs• 15 years ago

On Firefox you can press: 'View' -> 'Page Style' -> 'No Style'.

pyrotechnick• 15 years ago

If you use Chrome, try 'File' -> 'Print...' (Command-P on OSX)

20after4• 15 years ago

http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

You have to wonder. Millions of people living under the dictatorship of one man ( with the help of a few dozens leaders). I feel terrible for the young women, and kids. However the rest of the population can get up and fight. Hundreds of thousands will die, but someone has to be willing to die for the sake of the liberty of others.

candre717• 15 years ago

The article points out that one possible reason for the people's reluctance is distrust. In the case of the author, his family died because of a double agent. Who is to say that if you conspire with your fellow comrades to overthrow your leader, one of your peers will not out you. Civil unrest does not work without undying social trust.

zura• 15 years ago

The main problem is realizing that you need to fight. It is not that easy if you're continuously brainwashed since childhood.

InclinedPlane2• 15 years ago

North Korea is very much a totalitarian regime in every sense of the word. Everything flows from the state. Food. News. Entertainment. Education. Jobs. Everything. And it has been totalitarian for around 2/3rds of a century. It's very difficult to fight against something so ingrained and omni-present.

From without it's also difficult to imagine toppling the North Korean regime. To do so would almost inevitably result in quite literally hundreds of thousands of dead South Korean civilians in a matter of hours (through artillery). And perhaps just as many dead South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or American civilians dead through a nuclear attack. That sort of cold calculus makes it very hard to make the decision to end the DPRK regime.

spodek7• 15 years ago

Well put.

North Korea's military could easily be beaten -- if you don't mind possibly hundreds of thousands of South Korean and Japanese killed by their missiles. You'd win the war but lose a battle no one would consider worth losing.

You'd also have to negotiate with China first, so they know you'll stop invading well before their border. Last time the U.S. incurred too far into North Korea contributed to China entering the Korean War.

North Korea effectively holds South Korea and Japan hostage with its missiles. It acts belligerently to make credible its threats to use them.

Meanwhile, the people don't know things could be better. They aren't stupid or brainwashed. The state simply controls nearly all information entering the country. They believe they have nothing to envy from the rest of the world and that the U.S. is starving them. From their perspective they have no reason to revolt.

They have no internet or knowledge of revolutions elsewhere in the world.

sun123• 15 years ago

There is a problem with even thinking about revolting in NK. If you show any signs of revolting, your entire family including your cousins will be sent to the gulaag and killed(Bad blood). If it is your life you can give it to save the country; but you will think twice if your parents, wife and children are going to be killed.

mml2• 15 years ago

... And your children, and their children, and their children. 3 generations is the rule of thumb, though surviving that long usually makes the issue moot.

dinkumthinkum4• 15 years ago

I hate to be smug but that's kind of chicken hawk. Also, who's to say this hasn't happened already and those that have tried were put in prison, tortured, and killed? It's more complicated than that. To put on a resistance, you need food, weapons, etc. This is a country far more closed than Libya or Syria. I suppose you could argue for some Gene Sharp style revolution but I don't know if many people in North Korea have read him.

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

So it appears at lot of people disagree with me, however nobody is proposing a solution. Are these guys basically doomed?

bitops3• 15 years ago

This link is more browser friendly: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/08/12/the_secret_...

rplnt• 15 years ago

The first one is more human friendly though.

SystemOut• 15 years ago

Could someone edit the link and remove the "print" query parameter? It's pretty annoying that the page pops up the print option on chrome upon loading.

harryf2• 15 years ago

Much as it's a fascinating story my BS alarm is flashing. Is there anyone at Georg Mason University who can confirm Professor Kim Hyun Sik actually exists?

sunchild• 15 years ago

The source has a solid reputation, as far as I know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy

Mavyrk• 15 years ago

If he doesn't exist, there's an awful lot of gatherings with him as a guest speaker at universities hitting on Google over the past four years from 07 to 2010, and he was (if Google can be believed) a visiting professor at Yale from 03-06 up until becoming a research professor at GMU.

yink• 15 years ago

I attended a talk he gave at Duke University either in 2010 or 2009.

harryf2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the confirmation

mqzaidi• 15 years ago

I am finding a few things hard to believe as well. In the commonwealth games, the Indian Government rounded up beggars and sent them out of Delhi. In the Iraq war, GWB banned the media from covering body bags. Every state is guilty of this ,so unless the deliberate crippling part is true, it may just be another exercise in FUD, much like the weapons of mass destruction.

drumdance3• 15 years ago

The FUD would be a lot easier to refute if NK would actually let people into and (especially) out of their country without a security apparatus monitoring their every move.

spodek7• 15 years ago

The control of information and people's lives in North Korea is incomparably more than the examples you gave. Respectfully, your comparisons are not close.

The difference is not merely quantitative.

North Korea's activity is well documented and overwhelming.

If you want independent corroboration, sources here -- http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-bibliography, particularly in the human rights sections -- are a good place to start.

dinkumthinkum4• 15 years ago

The problem with your argument is that in the West, we immediately knew about those issues. You just can't compare those two things.

yogrish• 15 years ago

Touching story. But,author never mentioned why he changed so much and became ruthless...not even sparing his teachers family.

lusr2• 15 years ago

Yes it's more like a collection of anecdotes that have almost no bearing on the title.

nestlequ1k2• 15 years ago

It's interesting info. I don't think you're going to find anyone who is able to speak with the full story. Given how locked down that country is, and how many smart people were murdered for no reason.

vnorby• 15 years ago

"Even today, long after becoming the sole supreme leader of North Korea, Kim refuses to allow graduates of the Namsan School in his inner circle. After all, those who have known Kim Jong Il since youth are bound to see him as human -- not the center of a god-like cult of personality."

In the new Steve Jobs biography, Walter Isaacson quotes Steve on why he didn't let his parents come to his school's campus: "I didn't want anyone to know I had parents. I wanted to be like an orphan who had bummed around the country on trains and just arrived out of nowhere, with no roots, no connections, no background."

Interesting how powerful people manipulate the story of how they got to be where they are. Speaking of which, I was raised by wolves.

jayair• 15 years ago

You too?

I'm not sure if it is just powerful people. I think in many ways we all want to live in a world that fits with our image of ourselves. And some work harder than others to make it happen.

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

> I didn't want anyone to know I had parents.

As anyone who is the parents of teenagers can tell you: That describes pretty much describes a large fraction of that age group.

There is a psychological growth phase which involves separation, and that is one manifestation.

jseliger• 15 years ago

"There is a psychological growth phase which involves separation, and that is one manifestation."

I wonder if this phase is actually about teen social structures and hierarchies as they've developed in Western countries. I'm reminded of something pg wrote in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular:" http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html :

I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.

So I wonder if a large fraction of the age group want to reject their parents because of the way they've been raised and schooled.

You obviously didn't argue that this phase is universal, but I still find the idea interesting.

zandor• 15 years ago

I guess most people find the whole idea of a prodigy child rising up from nowhere without any family support all by himself kind of enticing.

P.S: Yes, but did you also escape from Nazi Germany in a sub?

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

It's not weird for a teenager to not want to admit to childhood. It is when a middle aged person won't.

code_duck• 15 years ago

In Jobs' case, it could be psychologically related to the fact that he was adopted.

michaelbuckbee• 15 years ago

If you found this at all interesting, I would highly recommend watching the Vice Guide to North Korea - http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-n...

simondlr• 15 years ago

Watched it yesterday. Incredibly strange and unreal to think such a fabricated society is possible in these times.

megablast• 15 years ago

We all do. You would be surprised what u believe that isn't true.

euccastro3• 15 years ago

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730

jritch2• 15 years ago

watched this a few times - very interesting yet also disturbing at times. Hats off to vice, I find most of their guides really interesting

spodek7• 15 years ago

This National Geographic episode about an eye doctor who visited North Korea shows North Korea from the inside without showing off how cool the film makers are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxLBywKrTf4

watmough• 15 years ago

The documentary 'A State of Mind' is available for streaming on Netflix.

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/A_State_of_Mind/70038815

Excellent documentary that follows a couple of young gymnasts through family life and training for a big event.

spodek7• 15 years ago

I would recommend not watching the Vice Guide to North Korea. That series is more about Vice (which I've read and enjoyed for over a decade and otherwise recommend), using North Korea and their preconceptions to show themselves off, than about North Korea (though North Korea does show through). Yes, the place is weird, but Vice sensationalizes it out of proportion and shows themselves off. Great for Vice, but at the expense of understanding.

My bibliography -- http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-bibliography -- has many sources more valuable for learning about North Korea. I found the New Yorker pieces particularly valuable, as well as the work by Barbara Demick.

I blogged extensively on North Korea since my visit there -- http://joshuaspodek.com/category/northkorea. My goal is to promote understanding, not to sensationalize. I've gotten good reviews on

- My series on North Korean strategy --http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-strategy-preview

- My series on playing in the first ever Ultimate Frisbee tournament and about sport in creating bonds -- http://joshuaspodek.com/ultimate-frisbee-north-korea-part-1

To Vice's credit, their recent series on exploring the North Korean logging camps in Siberia is more mature, though is outside North Korea.

hobonumber1• 15 years ago

That was a great bibliography + blog about NK.

Untitled• 15 years ago

Personally I found the movie "Children of the secret state"

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b50_1188117332

extremely moving. It is video shot inside N. Korea illegally and exported to China.

Be warned though, it is extremely horrific and shocking! I'm a grown adult and it reduced me to tears.

spodek7• 15 years ago

In part based on feedback from posting on this page, I polished and compiled the series on North Korean strategy into an ebook.

Thank you, HN, for your feedback.

The books is at

- Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PMDXTM?ie=UTF8&tag=...

- Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/118264

Please feel free to contact me directly with questions and comments.

ck2• 15 years ago

That guy strikes me as "Bridge on the River Kwai" - happens to be rarely well educated in a crippling environment and knows the "leader" is not a good person but to hell with that he is going to do his job as good as possible even if it means his own destruction and furtherment of the enemy standing right in front of him.

Evil dictators are evil - so are all the people that do their little part to help him because they cannot find anything wrong with doing their little job as best they can.

But so is a mindless military in ANY country who sign on to take directions to kill other people at the behest of a single leader that they aren't supposed to question.

drumdance3• 15 years ago

I found this graphic novel by a French cartoonist who worked in North Korea to be fascinating:

http://www.amazon.com/Pyongyang-Journey-North-Guy-Delisle/dp...

findm• 15 years ago

I found the article to be an interesting read but I wish that someone could talk about the psychology, history behind why the country became that way instead of just finger pointing on how terrible the conditions were. While its difficult to feel any empathy towards a manipulative, despotic, authoritarian regime, I also think that most westerners misunderstand and underestimate the people and their situation.

The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was. This is just how the country was for over 2 millennia. The north, especially due to its easily defensible mountainous terrain, has always played a pivotal role in keeping larger more powerful threats from absorbing the whole. Considering its history it sheds some light into understanding their extreme xenophobia.

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice? This is a culture steeped in confucianism, the patriarch is supreme and group cohesion and harmony is of higher importance than the needs of an individual. Even linguistically, social order is embedded into the language with many different levels of honorifics for different rank and class.

A little off-topic but just my 2 cents.

The Caste System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Korean_caste_system

CWuestefeld3• 15 years ago

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice?

I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name.

In any case, your reference to linguistic differences probably doesn't hold up.

- - - Quote [1]

Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been.

When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews.

- - - End Quote

and also

- - - Quote [2]

...the strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. ...

Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Inuit people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English. The notion that Arctic people have an unusually large number of words for snow has been shown to be false by linguist Geoffrey Pullum; in an essay titled "The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax", he tracks down the origin of the story, ultimately attributing it largely to Whorf and suggesting the triviality of Whorf's observations.

... A recent study by Peter Gordon examines the language of the Pirahã tribe of Brazil. According to Gordon, the language used by this tribe only contains three counting words: one, two and many. Gordon shows through a series of experiments that the people of the Pirahã tribe have difficulty recounting numbers higher than three (Gordon, 2004). However, the causal relationship of these events is not clear. Critics have argued that if the test subjects are unable to count numbers higher than three for some other reason (perhaps because they are nomadic hunter/gatherers with nothing to count and hence no need to practice doing so) then one should not expect their language to have words for such numbers. That is, it is the lack of need which explains both the lack of counting ability and the lack of corresponding vocabulary. Moreover, a more recent study suggests that the Pirahã have a basic understanding of geometry despite their language.

- - - End Quote

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.htm...

[2] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

sedachv3• 15 years ago

> I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name.

That's probably because you need to study more history.

Taking the past 200 years in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassin... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt

That's just the largest, most-well known events.

It would also help to know a bit about current events (NazBols/Other Russia protests, the Caucus wars going on for the past 10 years, etc.).

By Germans I assume you're referencing Nazis. Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? Given how much ordinary Germans profited (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-W...), it's surprising more of them didn't support the Nazi party.

runjake2• 15 years ago

Westerners always raise the question, why don't the people rise up against the injustice?

Because that requires a particular tipping point, which sits on a sliding scale.

With the economic crises, and the draconian anti-freedom laws in several western countries, one could ask us the same.

guns• 15 years ago

> The NK brand of communism is just a thin veil for the old dynastic feudal caste society that Korea traditionally was.

While your argument is defensible, I think characterizing the NK autocracy as a natural progression of pre-occupation Korea is misleading and perhaps unfair.

It's important to remember that at the time of the NK invasion in 1950, Korea had only recently been freed from the 35-year Japanese occupation in which the Japanese actively sought to eradicate Korean culture. The successor to this was another occupation by the US and USSR.

Although the new interim governments were more benign I don't think it was clear that the future would hold any kind of true independence from foreign states, and certainly US style democracy seemed quite far fetched.

And so it seems to me that if I was a young man of fighting age in Korea in 1950 (and thus born during the occupation), I would have found the NK motto of "Juche" (self-reliance) much more compelling than the murky, foreign roadmap offered by the US. Indeed, the professor in this article, Kim Hyun Sik, expresses this sentiment.

Even for many years after the Korean War, it wasn't clear that the US-led South was superior in ideals or in practice. The industry-heavy North (aided by infrastructure built by the Japanese and by Soviet engineers) flew ahead of the South in terms of economic growth and actual standards of living. Meanwhile, South Korea was embroiled in poverty, military coups, and cruel suppressions of student riots. You really couldn't have called SK a democracy until the late 1980s.

Of course, fortunes changed for NK. The classic Soviet style N-year plans were failing to meet their quotas, and as this began to happen, Kim Il Sung, who was really a foreign plant from Stalin, began to emulate Stalin's tactics of self-aggrandizement and brutal extermination of opponents.

If you wished at this point to question why it was that nobody stood up to Kim Il Sung in his rise as tyrant, you could very well blame Korean Confucianism and the hierarchical nature of Korean language and society. This is a strong reason, but I don't think it's sufficient.

There is a simpler answer: NK is a very tiny nation, with a reluctant ally on one border and a perpetual enemy on the other. Total control in a country of NK's size is actually possible, and with a constant menacing enemy, it was relatively easy to manipulate a small society into subservience. Think "1984", or the "War on Terror", but constrained to the state of Indiana.

azernik• 15 years ago

It is a veil, but not for what you think - see this interview: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/04/immersion-i...

Essentially, despite being thought of as a communist country, in reality North Korea is (by ideology) traces its ideological roots to the race-based nationalism of the early-20th-century Japanese colonization. In the book written by the interviewee, he describes how the main ideologues of North Korea were not pre-war communists, but rather pre-war collaborators with the Japanese, who picked up the official line that Koreans were an innocent, childlike sub-branch of the Japanese master race (post-war, they just excised the Japanese from this picture). Hence the North Korean propaganda emphasis on intermarriage with foreigners in South Korea, the effort put in (in the parent article) to eugenicist approaches to disability, etc.

irahul2• 15 years ago

That's an interesting and a well-written story. But yet, I find his "I pray for Kim Jong", "I don't want him to meet a tragic end" et al. a bit strange.

I don't know, it seems like denial and rationalization. A dictator got his family killed(possibly tortured before killing them), there is nothing he can do about it, so he is trying to find solace by believing he doesn't want Kim Jong Il hurt; and to justify why he thinks so, he is imagining good and innocence, when none exists.

He is well aware of things Kim Jong Il did to his family and common masses, and yet he is trying to imagine good in him - I can't find a rational explanation for his line of reasoning.

rgoddard• 15 years ago

Because in the end, him meeting a tragic end all to appease the author's anger does no good. While if Kim Jong can open up it would have a larger and more positive impact. Just a matter of trying to break the cycle of violence.

bostonpete• 15 years ago

> Just a matter of trying to break the cycle of violence.

What "cycle of violence"? Hasn't North Korea been run brutally by the same family for 50+ years? That is what needs to be broken, and it's far more likely to come to an end in a violent/tragic downfall than in a peaceful handover of power to his son.

roqetman• 15 years ago

I think that his forgiveness isn't for the dictator, it's for himself.

jordan0day• 15 years ago

I don't know that it's so hard to believe that someone could get past a base desire for revenge and take a more thoughtful approach? Especially considering that the author seems to be a religious person (he talks about praying daily, his mother wanting him to become a minister, etc.), I think it's completely possible that he could suppress a desire for vengeance and instead express forgiveness.

irahul2• 15 years ago

> base desire for revenge and take a more thoughtful approach?

> desire for vengeance and instead express forgiveness.

Forgiveness for someone who gets people tortured and killed, which includes your wife and children, isn't thoughtful, let alone "more thoughtful."

juiced• 15 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr9x6yLb8BY

refurb2• 15 years ago

Here is a (long) story about an American who lived in SK who got a chance to go to NK. It's an incredible read and well worth the time. His interactions with NK citizens and his gov't minder are really eye opening.

http://www.1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk-trip1.htm~mainframe

I don't know about you guys, but reading his story is really sad. It's like a whole country, with limitless human potential, is developmentally frozen.

refurb2• 15 years ago

Probably one of this best parts of this story was when he visited a shrine to the Great Leader:

"The next room contained more gifts from the South, including a Hyundai Grandeur donated by the former chairman of Hyundai (whose family is originally from the North). Mr. Huk asked me if I had ever seen one of these cars during my time in the South. When I said, "sure, my neighbor has one just like it," he gave me another one of his 'you have to be lying' looks. How could such a great gift, a gift implying so much respect, belong to some normal person like my neighbor?"

rrrazdan• 15 years ago

Its a political post so my politically loaded question should be forgiven. Wouldn't it have been acceptable, if United States had liberated North Korea instead of Iraq?

sethg• 15 years ago

At the time the Bush Administration got invasion-happy, it believed that Iraq almost had nuclear weapons. (In retrospect it looks like they weren’t that close, but let’s assume the Administration believed its most pessimistic intelligence reports.)

North Korea, on the other hand, already had nuclear weapons, not to mention a conventional arsenal that, as others on this thread point out, can lay waste to the South.

gcb• 15 years ago

So, the dictator forbid people from his high school to join high ranks, but this former professor boast of a dozen former students that are now in high ranks from that same school?

pick one.

The Secret History of Kim Jung Il -- written by one of his high school teachers

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