

SPONSORED: North Korea Is Asia’s New Start-Up Hot Spot - robbiet480
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/15/sponsored-north-korea-is-asias-new-start-up-hot-spot/

======
mrmaddog
Slightly amusing, but this parody of The Atlantic's sponsored Scientology
debacle doesn't really add much to the conversation. The one thing it parodies
correctly is "Hey look, we too can publish things that aren't up to our normal
editorial standards!" However, this piece blatantly makes up facts (i.e.
Instagram & Epicurious opening offices), whereas the Scientology piece was
opinionated and disagreeable, but not factually wrong.

In fact, countries have a long history of advertising in magazines under
sponsored content. Items like "Come visit XXX" are a staple amongst travel and
lifestyle magazines, though such pieces are usually differentiated via
different fonts and layouts.

If techcrunch had somethign to add, I wish they had actually argued their
point instead of hopping on the "Look, Controversy! Let's ridicule it!" train.

------
sideproject
I haven't been following the news on the Atlantic's sponsored Scientology
story, so I dont' know what the actual parody here is.

However, as a side note, I had a chance to visit North Korea in 2005 with a
friend of mine, whose father was (and still is) running an orphanage there (my
friend and I are both Koreans - South, but both have overseas citizenship).

(The city we stayed was not Pyoung Yang - the capital city of NK, but a much
smaller & poorer place)

Seeing the state of the people was quite heart-breaking. Because of the
shortage in electricity and water, the entire city was pitch black by 9pm.

As a programmer myself, the technological dark age that they are in is also a
huge concern. At school, students most of the time either do not have
computers or use a set of donated computers from foreign aids.

It would take a huge shift in almost all aspects of NK regime to make the
Internet available to the people of NK. My heart aches.

------
ars
Is this a joke off of the Atlantic scientology thing?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5057819>

~~~
mbetter
It can't be, no jokes are allowed on Hacker News.

