omonatheydid | On a visit to North Korea: "Nothing I'd read or heard beforehand really prepared me for what we saw"

markthatcoin.livejournal.com posting in

A few weeks ago, there was a post mentioning that Google's former CEO and current Executive Chariman Eric Schmidt was headed over to North Korea. Huh? Well the story gets weirder: he invited his grad-school-aged daughter Sophie on the trip

Sophie published an awkwardly formatted review of the journey. It's difficult to read: it's one giant page, but there are two columns, and everything is sort of mixed up.

But it's worth the effort. There are a TON of pictures and a lot of personal commentary. It's an interesting read on how one of our peers (I'm generalizing here) experienced North Korea.

Here is her commentary: Sophie in North Korea

(the slideshow linked below is embedded at the bottom of the page, but there are more pictures interspersed that aren't in the slideshow)

Here is a direct link to her pictures: 44 pictures on Picasa/Google

(I haven't seen her pictures embedded anywhere else so I would prefer not to do so here. PLEASE CLICK either her website or the slideshow to see them!)

kottke.org posted these few choice sentences from Sophie's page.... I posted some longer portions under the next cut.

Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments.

The longer I think about what we saw and heard, the less sure I am about what any of it actually meant.

Nothing I'd read or heard beforehand really prepared me for what we saw.

Most of the buildings they visited -- offices, libraries, etc. -- were not heated:

They're proudly showing you their latest technology or best library, and you can see your breath

They weren't allowed to have mobile phones, there were no alarm clocks, and they were told their rooms were probably bugged:

One person suggested announcing "I'm awake" to the room, and then waiting until someone came to fetch you.

It's like The Truman Show, at country scale.

Very little in North Korea, it seemed to us, was built to be inviting.

You could almost forget you were in North Korea in this city, until you noticed little things, like the lack of commercial storefronts.

There is only revolutionary art. There is only revolutionary music.

I was delighted to learn that [Kim Jong Il] and I shared a taste in laptops: 15" Macbook Pro.

No one was actually doing anything.

They're building products for a market that doesn't exist.

And here are some longer sections that might better entice you to click over to Sophie's summary:

It's impossible to know how much we can extrapolate from what we saw in Pyongyang to what the DPRK is really like.

Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments. We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other).

It was a nine-person delegation in total. We left our phones and laptops behind in China, since we were warned they'd be confiscated in NK, and probably infected with lord knows what malware.

Lodgings:

Since we didn't have cellphones or alarm clocks, the question of how we'd wake up on time in the morning was legitimate. One person suggested announcing "I'm awake" to the room, and then waiting until someone came to fetch you.

My father's reaction to staying in a bugged luxury socialist guesthouse was to simply leave his door open.

Pyongyang:

Trucks equipped with loudspeakers roam the streets. "For the propaganda," Minder 2 told me, with a tone that suggested You idiot.

People there walk very long distances (miles and miles) in sub-zero temperatures, often in the middle of the road. (Not a problem because there are almost no cars outside the city center.) Conclusion: these people are really, really tough.

You could almost forget you were in North Korea in this city, until you noticed little things, like the lack of commercial storefronts. No street-level commerce, either. I didn't realize that I hadn't seen any plastic bags yet until I saw one person with a bag of apples and thought it looked out of place.

The subway:

Our best shot at seeing a non-staged group of ordinary North Koreans. In a fantastic bit of timing, as we exited the train, the station's power cut out (above right). The commuters around us immediately pulled out flashlights, which they presumably carry all the time.

The Kim Il Sung University e-Library:

Probably 90 desks in the room, all manned, with an identical scene one floor up.

One problem: No one was actually doing anything. A few scrolled or clicked, but the rest just stared. More disturbing: when our group walked in--a noisy bunch, with media in tow--not one of them looked up from their desks. Not a head turn, no eye contact, no reaction to stimuli. They might as well have been figurines.

On technology:

Their mobile network, Koryolink, has between 1-2 million subscribers. No data service, but international calls were possible on the phones we rented. Realistically, even basic service is prohibitively expensive, much like every other consumption good (fuel, cars, etc.). The officials we interacted with, and a fair number of people we saw in Pyongyang, had mobiles (but not smart phones).

North Korea has a national intranet, a walled garden of scrubbed content taken from the real Internet. Our understanding is that some university students have access to this.

On tour at the Korea Computer Center (a deranged version of the Consumer Electronics Show), they demo'd their latest invention: a tablet, running on Android, that had access to the real Internet. Whether anyone, beyond very select students, high-ranking officials or occasional American delegation tourists, actually gets to use it is unknowable.

What's so odd about the whole thing is that no one in North Korea can even hope to afford the things they showed us. And it's not like they're going to export this technology. They're building products for a market that doesn't exist.

Those in the know are savvier than you'd expect. Exhibit A: Eric fielded questions like, "When is the next version of Android coming out?" and "Can you help us with e-Settlement so that we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" Answers: soon, and No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions

I really recommend clicking over to her site to read the whole review. It's hard to decide which words are representative of such an unusual visit.

Source: Sophie Schmidt via kottke

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

baroness.livejournal.com

this is fascinating and freaky, thanks for posting!

From:

sonicphotonic.livejournal.com

It's always interesting to read about people's visits to NK. But wow her site is confusing.

From:

markthatcoin.livejournal.com

OT but it really pissed me off because google owns blogger (i was vehemently in the blogger camp vs lj/xanga/et al circa 2005) and she has the audacity to complain about a particularly useless layout option in google sites instead of using anything else google could provide to share her story
SMDH

endless charms, endless possibilities

On a visit to North Korea: "Nothing I'd read or heard beforehand really prepared me for what we saw"

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