Last week I self-published my first book.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n My visit to North Korea last year amazed me at how much we base our impressions of North Korea on pre-conceived notions. I already blogged daily<\/a>, but the experience affected me so much I started posting twice daily, one post on North Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then Kim Jong Il died and tons of articles came out on North Korea, many or most had the same pre-conceived notions or assigned credit to the leaders that I thought were properties of the system, making understanding or achieving change difficult.<\/p>\n Reading all those articles, I felt compelled to put my perspective out there. My posts on HN<\/a> got high karma. I assembled a number of my posts, polished them (they needed more polish than I thought), and posted them on Amazon<\/a> and Smashwords<\/a> for download to electronic devices.<\/p>\n The first time was laborious and time-consuming. Now that I’ve done it, I know how to do it easier and I plan to do it many times.<\/p>\n I’m going to start marketing soon. The big news days when Kim Jong Il died motivated me so I missed them as days to sell books, but I hope the book changes some people’s views of North Korea and helps motivate people toward effective change.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n —<\/p>\n EDIT: Here’s the ebook, Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World\u2019s Most Misunderstood Country<\/a>. I wrote it to help increase understanding, communication, and freedom.<\/p>\n I wrote the following on Hacker News and thought it fit here. Last week I self-published my first book. My<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3442,"featured_media":48024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"randalwfhnapifzecroc","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b9bbe0d5419ed1301488f7790d59766f31160ba1d73ace6c537ff0e9a08c5f56?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"I wrote the following on Hacker News and thought it fit here. Last week I self-published my first book. My","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":138,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",0,0,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",1,1,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ll.jpg",1,1,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"randalwfhnapifzecroc","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=3442"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b9bbe0d5419ed1301488f7790d59766f31160ba1d73ace6c537ff0e9a08c5f56?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Joshua](\"http:\/\/joshuaspodek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Joshua_Spodek_Understanding_North_Korea_cover_small.jpg\" "\\"Joshua")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"