Brian Reynolds Myers: Trending quotes (page 7)

“[S]omeone who doesn’t know a country’s history is bound to chuckle at the things its people worry about.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)

People , History , Country

“The North wants unification under its own flag, while South Korean progressives want the two states to coalesce over decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

“We're entering the most dangerous phase in the region in decades. I'm really not all that hopeful.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Hope

“When their propaganda lines up with their behavior in the real world it would be very foolhardy to ignore it.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

World , Behavior

“North Korea has to inspire its people and so far it's done that.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

People

“Everybody really is the "other" for North Koreans.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

“I want to be here for unification.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Yonhap (August 2011)

“Like Goethe and Spengler I’m convinced that history has an inner, organic logic which can’t be grasped purely in terms of causality.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Interview with Methodik http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2019/03/04/on-that-march-first-speech-b-r-myers/ (2019)
2010s

History

“Few things are more important to Pyongyang than its propaganda apparatus. Even when the rest of the nation came to a standstill in the mid-1990s, it never missed a beat.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2000s, Stranger Than Fiction (February 2005)

“South Koreans do not consider the integrity of their state important enough to go to war for.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

War

“I don’t buy the common notion that if the US and South Korea promise convincingly enough never to topple the Kim dictatorship from without, it will let itself be toppled slowly from within.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)

“Let’s remember not only how many South Koreans were killed, injured or abducted during a war the North started, but also that one of the most shocking parts of that conflict for people who experienced KPA occupation was seeing neighbors emerge on day one as fully-formed, snitching supporters of the enemy. Many bore titles in the underground organizations to which, it turned out, they had belonged for years. In several recorded cases they denounced people who were shot on the spot. That trauma sits deep.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, "Conspiracy Theory"? (August 2019)

War , Support , People , Parting

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy , Support

“Ideology, legitimacy, authority: Such topics used to interest academics no end. The mania for quantifying the social sciences and the attendant decline in foreign-language acquisition have changed things. I remember Sovietologists lamenting this trend when I was at school in the 1980s. It’s gone much, much further since. What cannot be researched with the proper statistical-numerical methodology is thought beneath serious analysis. On the rare occasions when a non-quantifier takes the microphone at a conference, the Gradgrinds lean back with an indulgent smile: Time for some light relief.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, League Confederation Goes Outer-Track (September 2018)

School , Time , Light , Smile

“[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Suicide , Reading

“Journalism is the most Americanized of all professions, and nothing is more American than the belief that economic matters trump ideological ones. There is very little talk of ideology in coverage of any country. Western journalists here see a poor North facing off against a rich South and laugh at the notion that the former might have serious designs on the latter. They don’t seem aware of what I call the South’s state-loyalty deficit.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (January 2018)

Loyalty , Country

“North Korea knows a nuclear war is unwinnable. I also think it fancies its chances of a peaceful takeover too highly to want to risk a premature invasion while U.S. troops are here.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

War , Peace , Chance , Thinking

“[A]crobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don’t see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime’s every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that’s another topic.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Thinking , Feeling , Parting

“The worse the quality of the paper is, the more seriously you should take the propaganda printed on it because that poor-quality paper indicates it's being distributed on a large scale inside the country.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Country

“So I’m going to say this once again: North Korea’s immediate goal is the withdrawal of US troops. Its ultimate goal is the unification of the peninsula under the star flag. And yes, it has good reason to believe this can be done without a war.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

War , Star