
Teaching Essay Writing in Pyongyang - throwaway344
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/what_it_was_like_to_teach_essay_writing_to_north_korean_graduate_students.single.html
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jpatokal
If you liked this, you might want to take a look at Andrew Holloway's "A Year
in Pyongyang", available free online at the link below. It describes the
experience of a translator in 1987-88, but not all that much has changed in
the years that have passed since.

[http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html](http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html)

~~~
brownbat
It's an excellent book.

He's admittedly sympathetic to socialist ideals, but there are obvious visible
problems in that state. So he generally does a nice job of "on the one hand,
on the other hand..." (ie, On the one hand, some North Koreans would beg for
cigarettes and alcohol off of foreigners, on the other hand, they are
incredibly nice people and most of them would only take gifts after much
insistence.)

His asides become steadily more bitter as the book (and his time in NK) goes
on though. One of my favorite bits is after he's gotten pretty caustic, right
after explaining how he saw a bunch of students using rocks to pulverize
discarded pavement at a nearly futile pace:

 _It would be wrong of me to give the impression that the great socialist
construction was uniformly stranded, literally, in the Stone Age. It was
around this time that brand-new push-button automatic gates were installed at
the entrance to the factory next door. These caused a sensation for the first
few days. All day long the people 's guard dolls were inundated with requests
from the workers to give a demonstration of this miraculous innovation. They
had read in Rodong Sinmun and heard on television and radio about the mythical
robotisation and computerisation of Juche industry. Now before their very eyes
the myth was being translated into reality, in their own humble factory. One
could imagine them as they watched the gates glide open and shut at the press
of a button, saying to one another, "If only our compatriots in the South
could see how advanced we are becoming. Then they would be astonished and rise
up as one to oust the puppet clique and drive out the US imperialist aggressor
in order to share in our prosperity. But Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo tell
lies about us and keep the people in darkness."_

~~~
the_af
Without getting into politics or ideology, I find his initial comment from the
second chapter tremendously insightful: that people see what they expect to
see. So foreigners expecting North Korea to be rotting hell-hole full of
unhappy people will see exactly that, and will express disbelief at any nicety
they see: "surely they are hiding something horrible".

This made me think... a while ago, I saw this website by a Western
photographer who took some recent pictures of North Korea (it's worth looking
at the pictures, they are fascinating:
[http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder](http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder)). The
pictures allow comments, and predictably most people comment things like "how
terrible this dictatorship must be, poor oppressed North Koreans!" When
presented with pictures of workers commuting to work, they comment "look how
unhappy everyone looks." And they comment the same for a picture showing a
band of schoolchildren practicing music, presumably at school: "look how
serious the children look, they must feel really unhappy."

In my opinion, regardless of the realities of the harsh life in North Korea,
these commenters are projecting their own preconceptions of the country. They
see what they expect to see. But I don't think their perceptions are
necessarily accurate, because if I took a picture of commuters going to work
in my country, they'd see similar unhappy faces. Almost no-one looks happy
while taking the train to work. And regarding the schoolchildren... what
people see in those pictures doesn't mesh with what the author of the book
says: that regardless of everything else, children are truly happy in North
Korea.

Maybe life is truly harsh in North Korea, their leaders lie to the population
all the time, and it's a truly impoverished country, but still the people are
happy, or at least not stereotypically depressed all the time?

~~~
ivanca
Kids are happy anywhere, that's the beauty of it, and commuters look unhappy
anywhere too. None of that is the problem with North Korea, the problem is
much deeper.

If you want to understand why please watch the video from this wonderful lady,
who at a very young age understood that her country wasn't a good one:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/an-injury-to-
all_b...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/an-injury-to-
all_b_3512759.html)

~~~
the_af
Thanks, I'll watch it later.

Note I do not doubt NK is a dictatorship. I'm merely commenting on people's
preconceptions strongly coloring what they see in this (or any) country. They
expect to see deeply unhappy people (because that's the story that gets told
in the West), and that's what they see.

------
kijin
> _Writing inevitably consisted of an endless repetition of his achievements,
> none of which was ever verified, since they lacked the concept of backing up
> a claim with evidence._

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is not unique to North Korea. It is
present in every society to various degrees, and usually manifests itself in
the incoherent tirades of those who almost invariably tout the benefits of
"tradition".

The idea that claims need to be backed up with evidence is a relatively recent
and rare occurrence in human societies. It needs to be taught, and it's often
an uphill battle. In every "traditional" society, rote repetition is the most
effective method of turning dubious claims into indisputable truth. The
endless hand-copying of ancient texts in every medieval European monastery and
Asian academy were not merely a low-tech way to make more books; much more
importantly, such activities helped indoctrinate everyone who participated,
both consciously and unconsciously. P is true because the Bible says so. Q is
true because Confucius said so. R is true because, as the Dothraki say, "it is
known." What more proof do you need? It is fucking known. Anyone who says
otherwise is obviously delusional, a menace to civilization. And so the
Athenians killed Socrates.

And this is the fundamental reason why merely "giving truth its day in court"
will not be enough to get rid of the insanity that plagues the politics of
every country. People like Snowden, Assange, and Manning helped bring
important evidence into the light of day, and even at this very moment, people
are working to smuggle evidence into regimes like North Korea. But producing
evidence is only half of the battle. In order for evidence to actually serve
its purpose, people's brains need to be wired to process it in the right way.
We can only hope that _homo sapiens_ has a natural proclivity to think
critically, at least some of the time... despite a large body of evidence to
the contrary.

------
tdees40
I'd just point out that Suki Kim's book is really an ethical morass, as you
can certainly make the argument that she put the people she used to work with
in a terrible position.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/tales-told-out-of-
sc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/tales-told-out-of-school-in-
pyongyang-cause-stir.html?_r=0)

~~~
ivraatiems
Interesting. I think I will have to read this now, but I'm not sure I want to
pay for it if it's funded by deception.

A couple of thoughts just from the article:

Bad deeds do not wipe out good, nor vice versa. If Christians are helping the
impoverished or teaching English because they want to convert people, that
doesn't make giving a hungry person food any less of a good thing to do (this
is a general example).

When she says "it's another code word for what they're doing," she doesn't go
on to explain what that means. What ARE they doing? I think if she had a
concrete, non-easily-objected-to explanation of the problems with what she'd
observed, she'd have come out and said it. She describes their general goals,
as she sees them, earlier in the article, but provides no evidence or
justification for those conclusions.

~~~
glesica
She did explain it, they are seeking to establish a foothold for Christianity
in North Korea so that, at some point in the future when the regime falls or
changes its mind about religion, they can "capture" the country. This isn't a
very complicated idea, it's how missionaries operate in countries that frown
on their work.

~~~
ivraatiems
I understand the idea, but without any evidence, it seems kinda paranoid to
just assume that is automatically the case. Hopefully the book explains why
she reached that conclusion about her colleagues.

In any case, assuming it is true, I don't support it necessarily - but again,
it is hard for me to say "no, bad!" when they are also making a legitimate
effort to help North Koreans.

------
chiph
When the DPRK regime falls, these people are going to be _beyond_ confused.

~~~
jpatokal
Probably not as much as you think. The author seems to be taking her students'
comments and writings at face value, but her students _have_ to praise the
Great Leader and kimchi and whatnot in public, regardless of what they
actually think. Remember, her students were the elite of DPRK, the kids of
high-ranking party functionaries etc, who certainly have access to Western
goods and South Korean TV and whatnot. They know full well that much of what
they are taught and the line they have to parrot is a lie; but there is just
_no_ safe channel to express that, particularly to a foreigner like her.

Now they may not realize the full extent to which everything is a lie, and
there's probably a few particularly dim true believers in the mix, but in the
North Korea of the 2010s, post murderous famine and in an era of mushrooming
black markets, the failure of Juche is pretty obvious.

------
discardorama
So how does DPRK survive? How do they keep sending (or trying to send)
missiles, exploding nukes, etc.? Surely there are _some_ people there who know
that DPRK is all make-believe?

Also, I didn't get how she was able to access the 'net, but not her students?

~~~
EliRivers
The computer with the net access is simply forbidden to them, and not
accessible. Teachers may use it. They may not. It's that simple.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Even if they did find stuff on said computer somehow, they have been taught it
is lies.

------
readme
Great idea. Someone has to write all 100,000 of Kim Jong-Un's essays.

