Brian Reynolds Myers: Trending quotes (page 4)

“A major problem is the characterization of the government in Seoul as liberal, as if it were no less committed to constitutional values and opposed to totalitarianism than the West German social democrats were in the Cold War. This makes Westerners think, "North Korea can't take over the South without a war, but it knows it can’t win one, therefore it must now be arming only to protect itself."”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

War , Problem , Thinking

“Judging from the yin-yang flag's universal popularity in South Korea, even among those who deny the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea, it evidently evokes the [Korean] race first and the [South Korean] state second. There is therefore none of the parodying or deliberate desecration of the [South Korean] state flag that one encounters in the countercultures of other countries.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, North Korea's State Loyalty Advantage (December 2011)

Universe , Country

“To a radical Korean nationalist, the division of the nation, the race, is an intolerable state of affairs. So too is the continued presence of the foreign army that effected that division in the first place.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (February 2017)

“Americans are therefore wrong in assuming — and this was another line of argument against my RAS lecture — that South Koreans have struggled too long and too bravely for human rights ever to knuckle down to the North. There was no significant opposition here to the prosecution of Professor Park Yu-ha for criticizing the orthodox history of the so-called comfort women, and that took place under Park Geun-hye.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Women , History

“To misperceive the DPRK as a communist state – either of the Stalinist or indigenized kind – is therefore to misunderstand and miscalculate its behavior. I often encounter resistance to this point when lecturing to American audiences. Conservatives do not want communism let off the hook for creating this state, and liberals do not want Washington let off the hook for bullying it. Politically correct college students object to the attribution of racism to non-whites.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, North Korea's State Loyalty Advantage (December 2011)

Behavior , Communication

“South Koreans would rather see their state's security compromised than risk their own prosperity. Let’s not overestimate South Koreans’ attachment to their own state, which a sizable but influential minority still considers illegitimate.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (February 2017)

“Americans can't handle the truth.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

Truth

“You don't prove a point with nationalists; you cannot make nationalists happy.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

Happiness

“Whatever "Cold War system" there might once have been here is already defunct. There was never such a system in the minds of the opposed leaders, despite the peninsula’s tragic importance to Moscow and Washington. It might have been better if there had been. I’m not being flippant. Germans in East and West benefited from how each system tried to prove itself more compassionate and democratic, more conducive to its citizens' realization of their potential than the other. The relevant standards could hardly have been more different, but still. In contrast North and South Korea slid quickly into mutual nationalist recrimination, with each side accusing the other of subservience to a foreign power. This (not the over-weighted fact that Ossis and Wessis never clashed on the battlefield) is the main reason Bonn and East Berlin were able to maintain a coldly civil working relationship, routinizing mail service, family reunions, transit, etc, even at the height of Cold War tension.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

War , Family

“The North knows it cannot enjoy true security so long as the South is enjoying itself next door, be it ever so harmless in military terms and even free of US troops.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

“North Korea fears an improvement in relations.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

Fear

“This urge to give the North Koreans the benefit of the doubt is in marked contrast to the public fury that erupted after the killings of two South Korean schoolgirls by an American military vehicle in 2002; it was widely claimed that the Yankees murdered them callously.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, South Korea's Collective Shrug (May 2010)

“Korean nationalism is its emphasis on the vulnerability of the race.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, North Korea's Race Problem (February 2010)

“The average Korean alive in 1945 was to a far greater degree the product of Japanese rule than the Choson Dynasty.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Source: 2010s, North Korea's Juche Myth (October 2015), p. 24

“[S]ent this piece the other day to a few friends, I have decided to make it public in response to questions that journalists have been emailing me. Not that they will pay attention. Getting asked how Kim Jong Un is now going to sell denuclearization to the North Korean public — and asked in the tone of someone who expects it to happen — reminds me how futile it is to talk to a guild with no interest in ideological matters.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

Question

“[T]he establishment of a belligerent force’s intentions is always an urgently important matter in itself, regardless of how likely its ultimate victory may be, as America should have learned on December 7, 1941. As for the boundaries of our imagination being the boundaries of the possible, here’s another date: 9/11.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, On Some Counter-Arguments (October 2017)

Imagination , Learning , Victory

“Pyongyang watchers consider the regime to be so hungry for economic growth, progress and other goodies as to have no pride, no mission, and no commitment to victory, real victory. It's all eros and no thymos. On this error rests our administration's hope for denuclearization.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Hope , Error , Victory

“North Korea kept harassing the South, and one day they just clicked: Tell me that isn't a stalker's dream writ geopolitical.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Dreams

“North Korea is looking more and more like a poor man's version of South Korea.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Colin Marshall (February 2015)

“The difference between East Germans and North Koreans is day and night.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Night