Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

https://mydiplomaticlife.com/how-to-survive-3-years-in-north-korea-as-a-foreigner/

by Hansig_jw • 2 years ago

472 293 2 years ago

stuff4ben• 2 years ago

This was fascinating! If I could do it all over again, I'd have gone into the US Foreign Service. Maybe not to places like North Korea (which we don't have a presence in anyways), but I'd have loved to travel the world. Maybe in the next life...

unixhero6• 2 years ago

Sure, if you could get in.

I tried for 5 years in a row to get into my country's service. It failed. Pivoted to information security, hey at least I am a millionaire now.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10• 2 years ago

may I ask if you have any career advice?

trallnag• 2 years ago

What currency

bozey07• 2 years ago

Maybe not to places like North Korea (which we don't have a presence in anyways)

Sure they don't ;)

jrockway• 2 years ago

Maybe in the next life...

I told myself this about an important decision. I thought about it more and decided I didn't really believe in that (proof: what do you remember from your last life), so just did it in this one. No regrets!

pasquinelli• 2 years ago

you'll eventually forget this life too, so i'm not sure about your proof ;)

Xeyz0r4• 2 years ago

Just do IT!

shagie• 2 years ago

On one of my flights out of... I forget if it was SJC or SFO - but it was one of them... I sat next to someone in uniform and we got to talking. He was a former dentist who joined the military and was studying in Monterey his fifth foreign language https://www.dliflc.edu

netsharc4• 2 years ago

The last paragraph talks about being cut-off and isolated. He didn't mention Internet or phones for private use, so I wonder if they didn't have that. I can imagine smartphones being disallowed, and even if allowed, limited to home WiFi...

tarentel• 2 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have internet but I know little of North Korea. They definitely didn't have smartphones as this was the early 2000s.

kombookcha• 2 years ago

One interesting thing about NK is that they have their own walled garden intranet, only accessible from NK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)

Kwangmyong has been around since the latter half of the 90s, and is famously 'home grown' as a deliberate security feature.

NK also has some access to the regular internet, but it's very limited and tightly controlled. Meaning it is a luxury reserved for a few members of the upper echelons of NK society, or certain entrusted to people who need it for work (intelligence agencies and whatnot).

notdonspaulding• 2 years ago

They did not have internet. From the article:

You were in a country that really was sealed off from the rest of the world. No internet or social media. All press and TV (one channel) dedicated not for news but solely for the glorification of the Leader. That is the Kim dynasty and the regime.

netsharc4• 2 years ago

Obviously the average citizen don't have Internet, but an embassy without Internet (most probably through satellite) is unthinkable, they need to be able to talk to their home government.

But if we go back 20 years (others have said this is written in the early 2000's), satellite communication was probably worse than 28.8k modems and really expensive, so yeah, it could've been there but only for official and not personal use.

roywiggins• 2 years ago

Later on they talk about installing a satellite dish for diplomatic communication, so the embassy might have had some sort of internet connection over that.

edm0nd2• 2 years ago

I might have given them the option to use their own OS (Red Star OS) at an approved location but I highly doubt they would have been able to do any actual work on it, especially nothing official.

usr11063• 2 years ago

I lived more than 40 years without a smartphone, believe me life was not a problem... The couple of years I used Internet before eternal September it was superior to what we have now.

netsharc4• 2 years ago

I can see your 40+ years of experience hasn't prevented you from offering out of context comments.

The context being of the author's experience, who back then came from life in the West with (most likely) a "dumb" phone and a home/work Internet for browsing/email/instant messaging, and was then brought to a regime where mobile phones were most likely not allowed, and Internet might not be available, and social contact changed from being able to go out and see friends to having only a few people in the diplomatic compound, and contact with locals being severely limited to the people sent by the regime to watch over you...

gwbas1c6• 2 years ago

Weird, I tried to click on "Kimchi Harvest" to see a larger version. Instead, the link was to https://mydiplomaticlife.com/how-to-survive-3-years-in-north..., which just took me to the top of the article.

starik36• 2 years ago

Oddly enough, Soviet Union had a thing similar to "Kimchi Harvest". I remember workers in my town having to go work at a collective farm for a week harvesting things.

They also had something called "subotnik", aka voluntary Saturday labor. This was a practice where citizens, including workers and students, participated in unpaid labor on Saturdays. These activities included various tasks like cleaning up the city (that's what I remember doing as a kid). There was nothing "voluntary" about it.

ZhongXina3• 2 years ago

It was still the norm in Uzbekistan until just a few years ago, but with cotton instead of potatoes. Not anymore AFAIK.

gwbas1c6• 2 years ago

I really appreciate anecdotes like that. As I've gotten older, I've wanted to understand a lot of the details about what makes life in Communist countries ... frustrating.

IE, in school we only had a superficial explanation of what communism is; it wasn't until I was in my 30s that I understood the whole "cult of personality" thing.

sva_2• 2 years ago

Gimjang week is pretty common in SK as well, especially among the elders

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimjang

jwrallie• 2 years ago

All the photos seem to have broken links, but for some of them you can get their direct link and remove the "-scaled" part to get a higher resolution. Not for the Kimchi one though.

cactusplant7374• 2 years ago

There was another diplomat that has videos on YouTube. I can't remember his name but he was able to move freely and use his DSLR around Pyongyang.

contingencies2• 2 years ago

Probably 15-20 years later then.

ZhongXina3• 2 years ago

Jaka Parker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcfiEX__cA

rightbyte• 2 years ago

Strange. It looks like some movie set in the DDR, but with the wrong manufacturing date on the car props and Korean extras in modern cloths. I guess the sparse city planning is the reason? Like, a lot of space.

gwbas1c6• 2 years ago

Years ago, I was lucky enough to listen to a talk from an American who got to be a tourist in North Korea. Ever since then I've been fascinated with stories like this.

North Korea is on my bucket list, but hopefully after the state loosens up.

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

North Korea can take you with whatever justification they feel like and return you as a vegetable.

I know the mass games look cool and people like to go to weird places, please avoid North Korea

Scoundreller2• 2 years ago

North Korea can take you with whatever justification they feel like and return you as a vegetable.

That’s most/all countries (or their embassies) you visit, no?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khash...

smcl4• 2 years ago

I am sorry but if you travel somewhere like Iran or North Korea you are doing so explicitly against the advice of most governments. Every single person visiting these places is told that they need to keep their shit together, otherwise the consequences could be dire for them or for those they come into contact with.

mschuster91• 2 years ago

Add Afghanistan to that list. Some Austrian far-right dumbass went there to make a YouTube video to claim Afghanistan were safe (obviously to justify deporting refugees there) - and lo behold, he got arrested by the Taliban on espionage charges and ultimately released after 9 extensive months of negotiations [1].

[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ausland/oesterreich-r...

sevensor2• 2 years ago

Or, you can visit South Korea today, and if you want to go off the beaten path, leave Seoul. The east coast is a beautiful and fascinating place. Go to Gangwon, ride a cable car up Seoraksan, eat the best seafood of your life.

jrflowers• 2 years ago

Or you could visit the world’s largest thermometer, float on the LSU lazy river. Go to Kerala and drink some delicious chai, watch the Rockies play a game in the Mile High Stadium. There is a whole world of things that are entirely unlike North Korea

gwbas1c6• 2 years ago

It's seeing aspects of a fundamentally different form of government that's the appeal. If it was just seeing "Korean" culture, I'd have gone to South Korea years ago.

(BTW, a good friend of mine told me he's been skiing in view of the DMZ, and they just laugh at the NK guards watching them ski with binoculars.)

jdougan• 2 years ago

Michael Malice?

ein0p3• 2 years ago

Same. I want to also visit Iran in the next few years. I fully expect that 90% of what I think I know about these countries is CIA propaganda.

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

I’m not sure that’s true based on Persians I know that live in the USA and are extremely angry about what happened to the country. I love looking at their old photos of Iran before it was consumed by a theocracy. They look like this.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829

gwbas1c6• 2 years ago

I doubt what I hear about North Korea is propaganda. The problems in their government are very obvious without any need for propaganda: The "propaganda" is just oversimplifying a topic that doesn't fit nicely into soundbites.

UberFly3• 2 years ago

Na. To hell with North Korea completely.

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

themaninthedark2• 2 years ago

Ah yes, we should hate a totalitarian state not for the oppression they subject their people to but instead because that oppression was turned on a young American who was quite possibly trying to steal something.

nenadg• 2 years ago

Laibach also got away with it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oD0W6SSBUA

the_duke• 2 years ago

The post never mentions a date, but this must have been around 2000-2004, since that is when the UK embassy was established. [1]

Some things have probably changed since then.

A fascinating read regardless.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_Kingdom,...

dheera2• 2 years ago

I wonder who works in those embassies. Are there some British dudes just living there that go to the embassy every day for work? Where do they buy food? What do their residences look like? Do have spouses and children? Where do they work and go to school? Do they enjoy life there?

thriftwy3• 2 years ago

They likely go to specialized shops for foreigners where you may only pay with US$-backed coupons, and can purchase most of stuff you can commonly buy in Japan.

netsharc4• 2 years ago

Some of your questions are answered in the actual article... no mention of spouses or kids, so most probably they don't come along.

H8crilA• 2 years ago

Intelligence officers. Even your average friendly embassy is full of them. In this case it was probably more to handle secure channels of high level communication rather that recruiting agents. He even mentioned at the beginning that this was the official purpose for the mission.

If you want to arrange something quickly between nations you go through their respective three letter agencies.

shiroiushi6• 2 years ago

Why would anyone in their right mind accept a job like this? It's a lot like taking a job that requires you to live in a prison for several years.

rad_gruchalski• 2 years ago

You’d wonder less if you had read the article.

sva_2• 2 years ago

A clue about the time might be

The World Food Programme (whose Head at the time was an American called Reagan!)

But I can't find him here or elsewhere:

https://www.wfp.org/previous-executive-directors

jkaptur• 2 years ago

Sounds like this person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ragan

wongarsu• 2 years ago

That must be a misspelling of Richard Ragan. He headed the North Korean World Food Programme from 2003 to 2005 according to Wikipedia

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

OliveMate• 2 years ago

Meanwhile instead of some fancy building, their embassy over here is... Well, a little more domestic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_North_Korea,_London

qingcharles2• 2 years ago

Amazing! Still a bloody expensive property, even 20 years ago.

Is that a flagpole in the front garden?

yazzku• 2 years ago

It's like the mom and pop shop around the corner.

lordnacho• 2 years ago

The impression I got, from attending a school with a lot of diplomat kids, is that a lot of countries have embassies as a sort of foreign holiday for their ruling classes. Now NK being a bit antagonistic and paranoid might be an exception, but I distinctly got the impression that there were a lot of countries that didn't really do a lot of diplomatic work with the host countries, but the embassy meant they could send some families to go live in the west and have their school paid for by the state.

Those kinds of embassies don't need to be in the fancy embassy district.

londons_explore2• 2 years ago

I went in once. They had an open-day demonstrating the skills of north Korean artists. The artwork was decent, and the experience a good one overall.

Every room had a picture of Kim, obviously.

rpeden• 2 years ago

Kind of reminds me of some of the embassies of smaller countries in Ottawa when I lived there.

There are quite a few in houses like this along Somerset Street if I'm remembering correctly.

why_at• 2 years ago

Curious if anyone knows of any more recent descriptions about what life is like in North Korea, like in the last 5-10 years. Most things I've read including this article are decades old.

How much have things changed there in terms of technology, food security etc?

gre5• 2 years ago

https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E?si=WK1Gp62Hbx0624Wx

Documentary about getting s haircut in North Korea

gverrilla• 2 years ago

this is a group from Brazil (so portuguese - you can use yt's autotranslate) who supports and studies NK - they have visited and on this live they show the pictures/videos and talk about life there, food, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQNQWwXA6_0

snicky• 2 years ago

After the famine in 90s both the party and the people realized that the state can't really guarantee any food security so it's mostly taken care of by free market as anywhere else in the world now. Trading goods may not be entirely legal, but is widely accepted.

Check "North Korea Confidential" by Daniel Tudor and James Pearson from 2015.

MIC132• 2 years ago

This is from 2019:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpdYcy8JtiisXTMb4zug_oCIB...

odysseus• 2 years ago

Check out the 2023 documentary Beyond Utopia for a glimpse. It’s currently on Hulu.

maxglute2• 2 years ago

There's hours and hours of NK footage if you search for North Korea Travel / Vlog in simplified chinese. They tend to have much laxer guides/minders, fluent in mandarin vs western travellers with minders with shit English (and I presume more suspicious / cautious). Very few of Chinese vlogs have auto subtitles which can be translated to english unfortunately. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZgzAquCs-o&list=PLk70D7sV6Q...

There was a few playlist from central asian travellers and with Chinese business man exploring with more casual minders a few years back but I can't find them. I know a few PRC nationals who made the trip for business, TLDR is NK cities and towns feels like PRC in the 90s with energy of PRC in the 80s. Some of the villages/hamlets seem like PRC from the 70s (which I guess is what most ppl think of NK). Other era reference points probably not helpful for ppl without context of growing up in PRC. So it's worth scrubbing through some of the videos, a lot of it is city and keep in mind NK is 60% urbanized.

rvoje• 2 years ago

Heres some propaganda: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrit... https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46164212.pdf https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-09-14/north-...

usr11063• 2 years ago

The pandemic has probably changed a lot. Virtually no foreigners have been there after 2019, so I guess the best we know is that we don't know.

InDubioProRubio• 2 years ago

Remember those marching formations, where a normal AK looked like a giant toy wielded by kids.

divan• 2 years ago

Honest and unpaid North Korea influencers (apparently trying to influence South Korea) can tell a bit :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzFoNe5rNMo

tuennesje2• 2 years ago

This book was published 2009, https://archive.org/details/nothing-to-envy-ordinary-lives-i..., and I can highly recommend it for anyone wanting to know a little about how life might have looked like growing up in North-Korea.

rob744• 2 years ago

The German Wikipedia article (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Botschaft_Pj%C3%B6ngj...) has some more details. Most interesting: unified Germany initially wasn't interested in diplomatic relations with North Korea, so between 1991 and 2001, the only country actually using the building as an embassy was Sweden (although Germany had a "Schutzmachtvertretung" during this time - not sure what that means, but at least the lonely Swede had some company).

tuennesje2• 2 years ago

In case someone cares, the term 'Schutzmachtvertretung' contains three words, Schutz = protection, Macht = Power/Might and Vertretung = Representation.

FrancoisBosun• 2 years ago

I'm mostly surprised about the free admission of bribery:

However, I soon found that a bottle of Johnie Walker Black Label handed out at particularly frustrating moments made things miraculously happen a lot quicker. Oh how the North Koreans loved their whiskey.

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

That's just diplomacy.

ceejayoz• 2 years ago

Long history of it, too.

The US made special clear coke in nondescript bottles for Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov so he could look like he was drinking vodka instead of the illegal Western drink.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-secret-clear-coca-cola-fo...

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

contingencies2• 2 years ago

Re-gifting would have likely occurred. Like: obtain bottle, pass to your superior, cement next-level promotion.

smcl4• 2 years ago

Sounds like they loved their whisky

pixxel• 2 years ago

If you’re going to be anal, explain why:

“Whisky (no e) refers to Scottish, Canadian, or Japanese grain spirits. Whiskey (with an e) refers to grain spirits distilled in Ireland and the United States.”

Johnnie Walker Black Label is Scottish, hence no ‘e’.

xenospn• 2 years ago

When I went there (2005-6), we were told to bring foreign cigarettes. And this is how I ended up importing Israeli into North Korea. Hopefully they liked them!

RegnisGnaw2• 2 years ago

I went in 2014. I was told Marlboro cigs. For a country that hates the US officially everyone loves those Marlboros.

samus3• 2 years ago

It's in the understanding that a lot of the difficulties that require this are fabricated and supposed to show the foreigners who is in charge.

jowdones• 2 years ago

I'm surprised you're surprised. I guess people from countries with fully functional monetary systems don't have an intuitive view how things work where money are essentially worthless. Most communist countries were like this during the centralized and hence highly disfunctional economy. You were paid a wage but essentially could shove it up your ass coze there was little to nothing to buy with it. Which made barter the only viable alternative. And you know what works best for barter? Non-fungible goods: alcohol, cigarettes and coffee. You can store them for years and still be good.

Those bottles of whiskey/whisky were NEVER drank, I bet you. They effectively circulate as currency, the only one that actually buys you things in a disfunctional economy: a visit to the doctor, exams, favors or just goods that theoretically can be bought with money but are not in stock. Suddenly found in stock for a bottle of whiskey.

ido• 2 years ago

Non-fungible goods: alcohol, cigarettes and coffee.

Aren’t all of these fungible?

derpilderp• 2 years ago

Sounds like half the embassy hates each other and every one hates the British

everybodyknows• 2 years ago

Video from inside:

https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/vice-guide-to-north-korea...

suzzer99• 2 years ago

This Vice series is amazing. The poignant encounter with the tea shop girl who never gets any visitors has always stuck with me.

thriftwy3• 2 years ago

https://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/

Artemy Lebedev, a known Russian web designer, visited North Korea and posted his notes with pictures (in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days).

There are three more sections with the selector below.

chgs2• 2 years ago

My favourite NK blog is the trip in 2008 from Austria to North Korea via the unexpected route from Russia

https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/10/vienna-pyongya...

Klonoar• 2 years ago

To this day I direct people to read this whenever the topic of NK comes up. It’s so fascinating and feels like a bit of Internet lore to boot with how much it’s been passed around.

jiggawatts• 2 years ago

in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days

It blows my mind a tiny bit every time I translate something with GPT-4. It’s flawless!

Fascinating article, it explained a few things I didn’t get before. E.g.: the locals collect grass in bags to feed to rabbits.

mangamadaiyan• 2 years ago

As far as this particular article goes, there's also a language selector at the top right corner. Quite a few articles exist in both languages, likely translated by Artemy himself (who I gather is bilingual).

tdq17• 2 years ago

I find the interview with a North Korea specialist Lankov fascinating too (has English subs) https://youtu.be/C84bzu9wXC0?si=AsBKTh0gRyGsISms

snihalani• 2 years ago

I saw a 504 when I loaded the site but then a reload fixed it. Could have been a great meta joke

wkat4242• 2 years ago

For someone who wants to read more in-depth stories about this topic I highly recommend the book "Only beautiful, please" by John Everard.

He was another British Diplomat (I think he was ambassador even) and he often would go on unscheduled biking trips freaking out his security escort. Though this was in less tense times, I doubt this would be possible in the days of Kim Yung-Un. Anyway, highly recommended, really.

sdf4j• 2 years ago

Pyongyang [0] by Guy Delisle is an amazing graphic novel depicting a foreigner animator living in North Korea. Never get tired of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang:_A_Journey_in_Nort...

V__3• 2 years ago

I'll preface this by saying that I can't support this with a source, so take it with a grain of salt. An acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked in that German embassy. Apparently, the extreme isolation of North Korea also made it extremely difficult to have any kind of opsec inside the embassy. Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one.

A few days after said person had a meeting in the German equivalent of a scif, there was a meeting with North Korean officials. One official let something slip, which meant a bug had somehow gotten into the scif. He didn't say anything about what the consequences were, just that one should not underestimate the North Koreans.

bagels• 2 years ago

scif = sensitive compartmented information facility

A room that is supposed to be highly secure with secure communication channels where it is safe to handle or transmit secret information.

77pt774• 2 years ago

A real life "cone of silence"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence_%28Get_Smart%2...

RGamma• 2 years ago

There's a kajillion ways to extract info via analog hole from a well-known room. Unless this room has counter-measures (that are unlikely to be accepted by an authoritarian government) this ain't surprising really.

l33t73322732• 2 years ago

SCIF construction procedure is made explicitly to counter analog (and digital) intelligence collection.

I highly suspect that if the government of a host country didn’t let a guest country follow standard construction procedures like the use of high density construction materials, then the guest country would either not continue construction of the diplomatic outpost or at the very least they would not proceed with using their (now) vulnerable storage closet as a scif.

Salgat• 2 years ago

I wonder if a trusted laptop with VR goggles and a VPN would be sufficient to transmit and read most information. For added security, use an external modified keyboard that is not vulnerable to being tapped.

influx• 2 years ago

Which do you think is more likely, the scif was compromised, or one of the people in the scif was?

V__3• 2 years ago

He didn't specify whether the scif itself was bugged or they planted a bug on someone, just that it wasn't a leak.

Gunax• 2 years ago

Sorry I really want to understand this comment. Can you help?

Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one.

Are you presenting that as a good or bad thing? If there is only one attack vector, that makes it easier to defend against, right?

One official let something slip, which meant a bug had somehow gotten into the scif.

You mean the North Korean or German official?

dmix• 2 years ago

The NK official probably mentioned something that was only said in the SCIF

And I'm guessing the diplomatic pouches aren't fully in the custody of the german gov at all times there? idk

mathsmath2• 2 years ago

Even in the US, nothing is technically stopping you from walking into a SCIF with a phone most of the time. We used the honor system.

I would almost automatically assume that any SCIF in a foreign country was compromised to some degree.

lolinder• 2 years ago

Which would completely invalidate the entire purpose of the SCIF, no? Unless it exists to feed fake info to the locals?

77pt774• 2 years ago

nothing is technically stopping you from walking into a SCIF with a phone most of the time

That is ridiculous.

I've been to multiple embassies as a nobody and no electronics were allowed and this was strictly enforced.

comfysocks• 2 years ago

If you work in a scif, then I might assume you already have a security clearance and were read-in to the program. Is so, that might explain the trust.

sho2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean about the NK situation making the diplomatic pouch an attack vector? Can you elaborate?

Fun fact, those "pouches" don't have to be a pouch or even a bag. They can be boxes or even crates and have been used for smuggling in the past, including drugs, weapons, gold and even - allegedly - people.

samus3• 2 years ago

TA mentions that they shipped in construction materials via diplomatic containers.

cm21872• 2 years ago

In a french documentary about the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), some former DGSE officials explained that when France took delivery of their new embassy in Poland during the cold war, they found it riddled with bugs. The cabling was hidden inside the concrete. They had to dig a several meters deep trench all around the embassy and severe all cables to isolate it before they could test each cable one by one. I don't know how they ever got comfortable they found every one of them.

lukan2• 2 years ago

"I don't know how they ever got comfortable they found every one of them"

If you take opsec serious, you should never be too comfortable.

And as far as I know with embassies and alike, there is the compromise of at least one room, that is very surveillance proof and checked regulary.

Vilian• 2 years ago

maybe not underestimate, but no one can really know if the truly culpride got caught

rvba• 2 years ago

This gave us the opportunity to overnight in Dandong, sightsee and food shop before picking up our serviced vehicle the next day and heading back into North Korea

I wonder what spy devices were installed inside the car...

whizzter• 2 years ago

Hearing about the lone Swede reminds me of the weird history/role of that, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/04/547390622/...

rob744• 2 years ago

Photo relevant to this article (showing the "mixed" embassy's entrance): https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/09/27/ambassaden1-976c...

paganel• 2 years ago

fields to harvest kimchi (cabbages), a vital staple in all North Korean diets. They would then take the kimchi home and pickle it in vast quantities and store it there.
This kimchi supply would then hopefully get them and their families through the long, bitter winter months.

This reminds me that my parents (they live in the South-Eastern Romanian countryside) make excellent pickled cabbage, in fact eating pickled cabbage is one of my fondest food-related memories from the dreaded 1990s (when there wasn't that much food to go around on account of lack of money, and we had close to no money because of the infamous Shock Therapy).

Very interesting to see how pickled cabbage has been helping people go through rough times at the two opposing sides of Eurasia (on the Korean peninsula and on the European peninsula).

jonathanyc• 2 years ago

Laughed out loud at the unexpected "90/100" rating at the end. Very interesting read. Thought this was interesting in particular:

When serving in Iraq or Iran, my biggest fear in those places was always the threat of physical harm, be it ambushes on our person or vehicles, being kidnapped, rocket or mortar attacks on our embassy or accommodation. There were close shaves and the threat and the fear never left you in all of these places. But as far as life in North Korea was concerned, there were none of these fears. Serving in North Korea gave you this strange feeling of being cut off, isolated and very insular and perversely at the same time “safe.”

I wonder how this compares to living in e.g. Libya under Gaddafi vs. after?

Stratoscope• 2 years ago

I posted my story a few times about picking up a North Korean shortwave broadcast on my car radio while driving to work at Adobe in San Jose around 2022. Rather than re-tell it again, here it is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38634348

jhoechtl• 2 years ago

For anyone wondering, the Voice of Korea broadcasts daily on shortwave Worldwide and can be received even inside a house, given your WiFi and Led lights do not produce excessive interference.

For frequencies https://shortwavedb.org/cgi-bin/shortwave.cgi? and search for Country North Korea

BrandoElFollito• 2 years ago

There are also streams available on Internet such as https://radio.garden/visit/yanbian-korean-autonomous-prefect...

I do not know how they relate to what is broadcasted on AM/FM for the general population, though.

darajava• 2 years ago

Really annoying and distracting that each instance of “North Korea” is hyperlinked to the same article.

omoikane• 2 years ago

I worked around it by opening up my browser's inspector and add "color:black" and "text-decoration:none" to all the "a" styles, which made them less distracting.

An easier way would be to copy&paste all the text to some other place, but there are some inline images that I thought might be worth seeing.

updateYourMind• 2 years ago

This is fascinating, I'm wondering how many people have been allowed to do this

1vuio0pswjnm7• 2 years ago

Actual title: How to Survive Three Years in North Korea as a Foreigner

khcbrunel• 2 years ago

As a korean (south), the article is amazingly interesting and the fact there is british embassy is quite shoking to me. How the best ally of USA 's embassy exists there.

Also feels very sad for north korean people under the worst dictator..

me_me_me• 2 years ago

why shocking? If you dont want to directly admit existence of some entity, you can use one of your allies to do the talking for you

Having a channel of communication is important even if indirect.

idiocrat• 2 years ago

I wish to know more about this time-capsule country.

Currently the country seems to experience an extraordinary construction boom (modern apartment buildings).

All we have are 20 years old pictures.

iJohnDoe4• 2 years ago

The concentration/prison camps are not often mentioned. I think there was a post about them on HN previously.

DiggyJohnson2• 2 years ago

The crazy negatives and activities of the NK government are the only aspect of the country that I see mentioned, usually.

waterTanuki• 2 years ago

There were a handful of shops that catered for foreigners. All transactions had to be in Euros as possession of local currency by foreigners was forbidden

This stood out to me in the article, as most countries incentivize foreign visitors to use local currencies to boost its strength. However, NK seems to have long ago come to terms it's currency will never hold value, so perhaps they instill this rule to boost their counterfeit money operations, or reserves of foreign currency.

teractiveodular• 2 years ago

It's all about getting their hands on foreign currency. Similar systems were ubiquitous across Eastern Europe, with the DDR's Intershop probably the best known: you could even take the subway across to Friedrichstraße in East Berlin and shop at the platform without needing to go through passport control.

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

edm0nd2• 2 years ago

Which is one of the main reasons why NKs nation state hackers go after crypto currency via hacks. It's the main way they can bypass a lot of financial sanctions against them and use that $$$ for their nuclear programs and other things.

They have stolen $3B+ over the past several years alone.

https://therecord.media/north-korea-cryptocurrency-hacks-un-...

SuperNinKenDo2• 2 years ago

Another aspect of it could be that this retards foreigners' capacity to sneak into shops they're not supposed to be in and buy things they're not supposed to buy. Not sure though, as apparently many shops are run pseudo-privately and I imagine any shopkeeper would be happy to accept some foreign currency.

laverya• 2 years ago

Unless, of course, it's illegal for normal citizens to own foreign currency.

If foreigners can only own foreign currency, and normal citizens can only own local currency, then it makes it a lot harder to bribe the locals!

sagasu0072• 2 years ago

Why Euro? And not USD? LOL

cardanome2• 2 years ago

It is to get their hands on foreign currency.

Plus, many products in the shops for local are probably heavily subsidized and have vastly lower prices.

iJohnDoe4• 2 years ago

Or simply they have very little local physical currency and it was printed decades ago and it might pose as an embarrassment, so they don’t want it seen by foreigners.

hakfoo2• 2 years ago

The DPRK introduced new banknotes in the late 2000s. They're reasonably modern and colourful. They don't look as technically sophisticated as some countries' notes with foil strips and polymer stock, but they don't look wildly out of date.

You used to be able to get a set off eBay for like $25, and sometimes uncut sheets of the older series, but I haven't looked in years.

Fun fact: it's probably easier to collect a reasonable type set of North Korean notes than South Korean. The Southern collection has a lot of hard roadblock notes-- a lot of notes that were replaced by the end of the 1960s and 1970s, so quality examples are expensive and rare, and one famous type from 1962 that circulated for less than a month before being flash withdrawn.

killingtime74• 2 years ago

After reading how they use human waste as fertilizer, I'm not sure not having access to local produce is so bad

gambiting• 2 years ago

I mean...... I'd need to look up sources to tell you the exact dates, but I know this still happened even in some European countries in the 90s, maybe it continued even later than that. And of course manure is still used to this day, nothing strange about it.

sagasu0072• 2 years ago

North Korea has been undergoing more frequent changes in the past two years, and I am more curious about what has happened during this period.

rob744• 2 years ago

The original title of the article ("How To Survive 3 Years In North Korea As A Foreigner") sounds unnecessarily hyperbolic to me considering that the author led a relatively comfortable life (having a swimming pool, being able to play tennis and golf) with only minor inconveniences, while some North Koreans were actually starving at the time...

SanitaryThinkin• 2 years ago

Overly sensationalist comment.

Everything is perspective; If you're use to certain standards, and the readers are use to certain standards, expressing the travel to a country where such standards are known not to exist, then you might view the situation as something to overcome —survive (to carry on despite hardships).

Xeyz0r4• 2 years ago

Living as a Foreigner in North Korea: A Contrasting Experience

alibarber• 2 years ago

I think the 'foreigner' bit makes it reasonably clear that the article will describe something quite different to life as a starving North Korean.

InsomniacL2• 2 years ago

A 2014 UN inquiry found evidence for "systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations" and stated that "the gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world"

I don't think having access to luxuries detracts from the danger he was in of being in a country where public executions take place for things as minor as 'fortune telling' or watching South Korean movies.

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

ZhongXina3• 2 years ago

Allegedly, supposedly... About 60 years ago, Hunter Thompson called out these words as propaganda devices that let you say anything about anyone you don't like without taking any responsibility for it. Nothing has changed in the journalistic standards since then.

haspok• 2 years ago

It's British humour, don't worry too much about it, sometimes also called sarcasm.

michaelcampbell• 2 years ago

while some North Koreans were actually starving at the time...

"some"

germandiago• 2 years ago

It is slavery... pure slavery the way it works.

Moldoteck• 2 years ago

fyi there are touristic flights from russia to nk. It involves guided excursions, ski, food. Ppl usually pay in $ ironically. There are some ru vloggers that went there (like elivosk)

Crier1002• 2 years ago

what an amazing read!

slightly unrelated to the post: does anyone know any similar blog posts as such about people writing about their life? especially in areas of the world that is less known of?

another one that i really like is https://brr.fyi/ where he posts life working at the antarctica

meitham• 2 years ago

I find it amusing the author lists several reasons to why the DPRK is poor not mentioning the severe economic sanctions that’s imposed on them over for their nuclear program! Economic sanctions are designed to make a country poor as a non militaristic method to force them politically towards a decision and the single major reason for that country’s misery! Whether you agree the sanctions are necessary or not is one thing but to mention every cause why the DPRK is poor blaming them without mentioning the embargo is nonsense!

morbicer• 2 years ago

It is not nonsense, DPRK poorness is majorly self-inflicted:

- they were actually economically ahead of South Korea after war, despite embargoes (granted they had USSR back then)

- they border with China, absolutely massive economy where you can sell/buy anything. China started embargoing them since 2017, long after the author was stationed there

- one example of a major fuckup that ruined them that is almost comical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_World_Festival_of_Youth_a...

Cuba is in much worse place embargo-wise because they don't border with anyone who can trade with, they are also horribly mismanaged as communist countries are but albeit being poor they are not starving level poor like DPRK

Three years in North Korea as a foreigner (2021)

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