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hari seldon
Joined: 05 Dec 2004
Location: Incheon
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 Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 11:07 pm Post subject: 'Glimpses of a Hermit Nation': Life in Chongjin, North Korea |
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Special LA Times series on life in North Korea's third largest city:
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His day begins at 4:30 a.m. The 64-year-old retired math teacher doesn't own a clock or even a watch, but the internal alarm that has kept him alive while so many of his fellow North Koreans have starved to death tells him he had better get out to pick grass if his family is to survive.
Soon the streets of his city, Chongjin, will be swarming with others doing the same. Some cook the grass to eat. The teacher feeds it to the rabbits his family sells at the market.
At 10 a.m., he eats a modest meal of corn porridge. A late breakfast is best as it allows him and his wife to skip lunch. Then he goes with a hand cart to collect firewood. He has to walk two hours from Chongjin, mostly uphill, to find a patch that has not been stripped bare of vegetation.
"There is no time for rest. If you stand still, you will not survive," said the teacher, a lean, soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair who could be described as elegant if not for his threadbare trousers and his fingernails, as gnarled as oyster shells from chronic malnutrition.
Later, if it is one of the rare evenings when there is electricity, he might indulge in reading Tolstoy. More often than not, he collapses for a few hours of sleep before the routine is replayed for yet another day.
Such is the quest for survival in North Korea, an impoverished country that is the most closed in the world. |
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chongjin3jul03,0,1828534.story?page=1
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chongjin4jul04,0,2287288.story
Appalling.
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Last edited by hari seldon on Sun Jul 10, 2005 3:27 am; edited 1 time in total |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| The stories sound horrible, but the videos don't look so bad. They look similar to the photos from South Korea in the 1960's posted here before. Maybe they are just a few years behind the times. |
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hari seldon
Joined: 05 Dec 2004
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 11:54 pm Post subject: |
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| djsmnc wrote: |
| The stories sound horrible, but the videos don't look so bad. They look similar to the photos from South Korea in the 1960's posted here before. Maybe they are just a few years behind the times. |
The goods in that illegal market seen in the video are too expensive for the average person to buy. And, since private business is banned in DPRK, those vendors are risking impisonment. |
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Links
Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Location: It's censorship and it's downright blasphemous
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:49 am Post subject: |
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| Ok Hui worked for a construction company's propaganda unit, a job that entailed riding around in a truck with a megaphone, exhorting workers to do their best for the fatherland. |
Honestly, that is what I thought was happening the first few times I heard the monotonous megaphone voices passing outside my window. Until I saw all the TVs/fruits/whatever being towed behind the speakers a few weeks later I was sure there was some propaganda spewing into my windows. |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 2:27 am Post subject: |
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| I wonder if NK is perhaps the worst country in the world. It sounds intolerable. |
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stumptown
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Location: Paju: Wife beating capital of Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 2:38 am Post subject: |
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| When I first came here, I thought those megaphone voices were the police looking for someone. |
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just because
Joined: 01 Aug 2003
Location: Changwon - 4964
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 2:54 am Post subject: |
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| Great articles and videos....thanks for that... |
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hari seldon
Joined: 05 Dec 2004
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 3:34 am Post subject: |
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| just because wrote: |
| Great articles and videos....thanks for that... |
I was surprised that it hadn't already been posted... The struggles these people face daily in North Korea trivialize the problems we cope with here. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 4:54 am Post subject: |
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| Later, if it is one of the rare evenings when there is electricity, he might indulge in reading Tolstoy. |
Interesting detail. I wonder what other international literature is allowed in North Korea. |
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