

Installing Red Star 3.0, North Korea's homegrown operating system - kevinchen
http://kevinchen.co/blog/installing-north-korea-red-star-os/

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barosl
As a South Korean, it is interesting to me that their translation of the
technical terms which originate from English is quite different to ours. In
general, the loanwords in North Korean tend to follow the meaning of the
original words, whereas those in South Korean follow the pronunciation of the
words.

For example, "system memory" is translated as "시스템 메모리" in South Korean, which
is basically a transcription that reads as [siseutem memori]. In contrast, the
same word is translated to "체계기억기" in North Korean, which is composed of
체계(=system), 기억(=remembering), 기(=machine), as shown in the last figure.

And also, they tend to use less word spacing in general. "관리자가입정보설정" in North
Korean would be written "관리자 가입 정보 설정" in South Korean. It's much alike German
word compound vs. English word composition (Bundesverfassungsgericht vs.
Federal Constitutional Court).

~~~
Svip
I know this might be an irrelevant comment, but I prefer translations that
translates the meaning, not the sound. And I feel it goes for my native
language, Danish, as well, which has unfortunately been heavily populated with
English loanwords, whose pronunciation has not changed. Which creates an
unfortunate circumstance for the language, wherein a speaker has to know how a
word is pronounced, and cannot necessarily guess it from its spelling.

~~~
ptaipale
More irrelevance, but I beg to differ. My mother tongue is a small language
(Finnish) and much of the time this kind of translations don't really work for
me.

To convey a meaning, you often need new words and concepts. And when
translations try to use "native" words which are new, not established and not
widely understood (even if they are approved by the official body that
recommends new words), they are not any more understandable - vice versa.

Translations that just use slang, typically derived from English, are more
understandable.

This phenomenon is so strong that I actually prefer to use English versions of
operating systems and applications, because the translations that make up
their own words to "explain meaning" are complete gibberish. My wife often
asks me to help with translated Microsoft software, and I tend to be at loss
about what they're trying to say. If it is in English, there's no problem. If
someone says it in slang that relies on words that come from the sound of
English words, there's no problem.

~~~
Svip
This is my reasoning for using the term 'polluted'. I primarily use English
interfaces (except for the select few times I'm handed a Danish one), because
English at least maintains one thing I like: Consistency.

The sad thing is there are decent technical terms translated into Danish, but
no one uses them, because they never gained traction, so instead English words
are used instead. I generally avoid these words when speaking, because I
honestly don't like them.

Most particularly, the word 'computer' bothers me like no other when speaking
Danish, that I always avoid it. Usually I use »maskine« (machine) or the
original Danish word for computer, »datamat«, if I feel so inclined.

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sitic
There was a interesting talk on 31c3 by Will Scott, who spend a year teaching
computer science in North Korea titled.

He showed Red Star and their Android version (towards the middle of the talk):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w703MQZcDhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w703MQZcDhY)

~~~
rmc
Yep, that was a great talk. Minor nitpick, I think he only spent two lots of 3
months there.

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rdtsc
In reference to DHCP vs static IP. There was an article about someone looking
at their browser:

[https://blog.whitehatsec.com/north-koreas-naenara-web-
browse...](https://blog.whitehatsec.com/north-koreas-naenara-web-browser-its-
weirder-than-we-thought/)

That one is funkier. Some ancient netscape version. The most shocking thing to
me was that the whole country seem to run on a single 10.x.x.x network!

~~~
userbinator
_The most shocking thing to me was that the whole country seem to run on a
single 10.x.x.x network!_

That would be the Kwangmyong:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_\(network\))

~~~
digi_owl
Reading that i find myself reminded of a corporate network in some kind of
cyberpunk world...

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quesera
Unburdened by the civilized world's chromatic biases, they've achieved a
reasonably attractive use of ISO-POISON-GREEN.

~~~
cheepin
Every Villain Is Lime:
[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/414471971929206671/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/414471971929206671/)

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dennisbest
Copying Apple? I thought Samsung was a _South_ Korean company. (Boom!)

~~~
danjayh
Apple clearly copied Red Star. Juche, bro.

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bradgessler
I'm curious what network activity would come out of the VM if the author
turned on the network interface.

~~~
apt-bunt
Exactly. I was disappointed that there was absolutely no attempt to look under
the hood of this thing. That would actually be an interesting blog post to
read: like a look at the system, pre-installed programs, the difference
between it and PearOS, whether you can install whatever software you want on
it, whether there is a package manager and, and then of course some wireshark
captures.

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chii
mind blown at how much of osx they've copied.

~~~
rdtsc
Yeah just like the author, I was expecting something very ugly looking but was
surprised that it looked good.

One one hand it makes sense they copied -- why spend time and effort into
drawing all those assets from scratch? Take the best out there, steal it and
you are done.

On the other and Apple is the epitome of your capitalist, western, company --
one that would surely be decried as a failure or an example of Western evil
decadence by the propaganda. Perhaps those developing this are sort of things
are given a more free reign and operate outside the "propaganda" domain.

~~~
digi_owl
I find myself wondering if it is some artifact of their science/engineering
elite being educated abroad, and ending up with Macs in hand because they are
right the most readily available *nix out there.

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godzillabrennus
I love that they made it look like Aqua from OS X. If only Apple could pull
that off again...

~~~
neutronman
Maybe they should hire Kim Jong Un?

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brooklyndude
In photographs, I've noticed that Kim Jong-un has a Mac on his desk.

~~~
sebastianavina
Or maybe is just a very good hardware theme

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userbinator
The UI is very OS X-like but the most obvious difference is the buttons aren't
shiny enough. They have this slightly weird "depressed" look to them.

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the_rosentotter
Hipster level: Running Red Star 3.0 Linux

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drinchev
There is another good article [1] on this topic that explains how to change
the language to English ( even for the installer ).

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979)

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kyberias
Wait did they really implement all this OSX cloning in North Korea? Are you
sure this isn't subset of some skin developed outside of NK? It must have
required a considerable amount of resources and skills. Do they have it?

~~~
alt219
Perhaps if NK doesn't possess the technical resources, they would at least
have the financial resources to contract with a Chinese developer.

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digisign
Looks better than Ubuntu, wonder if there are bugs he doesn't mention.

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tomkadwill
Is it compulsory that all North Koreans use Red Star 3.0?

~~~
blinkingled
According to the CCC talk by a guy who went there to teach CS, most everyone
uses WinXP - Red Star is used in industrial setting mostly.

If that's the case wonder why they went all the way to so meticulously clone
OS X UI.

~~~
mikeash
Perhaps the reason is similar to the (apocryphal) tale of how the Tu-4 was
manufactured with bullet holes copied from a captured, battle-damaged B-29
because Stalin said to copy it exactly.

~~~
blinkingled
That or they're planning to transition from XP to Red Star for everyone
whenever it's 'ready' \- which would be quite an ambitious plan!

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markcerqueira
Nice. Now all we need is someone Korean to come in and translate the messages
that we can't infer (like that welcome screen).

~~~
barosl
The welcome screen says:

> The operating system of our own style, "Red Star"

> "Red Star" OS 3.0 for users is a system of our own style, whose stability,
> performance, ease of use and security are achieved at a high level.

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dojo999
Somehow I find it ironic to see that Red Star OS 3.0 uses (NSA's) SElinux to
lock things down.

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scjody
Any idea if they based their distro on Pear OS or if it was reskinned from
scratch?

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higherpurpose
Red Star 3.0 is best OS on the planet.

