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Brian Reynolds Myers Quotes
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Brian Reynolds Myers , usually cited as B. R. Myers, is an American professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, best known for his writings on North Korean propaganda. He is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Myers is the author of Han Sǒrya and North Korean Literature , A Reader's Manifesto , The Cleanest Race , and North Korea's Juche Myth . Wikipedia  

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Brian Reynolds Myers: 149   quotes 2   likes

Brian Reynolds Myers Quotes

“[I]n a confederation the South must accept the ultra-nationalist Kim Il Sung cult, whereas the North must acknowledge only the South’s superior prosperity and technology — and one of the main goals of confederation is to eliminate that gap as rapidly as possible. (It will be as much a matter of pulling the South down as the North up.)”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)

“North Korea cannot normalize relations with the United States.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

“Western observers focus more on the regime's economic failures than the North Koreans themselves do. Remember that it was only in recent modern times that Western societies began expecting the state to secure constant economic growth and rising prosperity. Well into the 20th century people expected little more from the state than that it protect them from foreign powers, and expand the influence or territory of the nation. Prussia was remarkably like North Korea in many ways, yet we remember it as a very successful state. If we judge North Korea by its own standards — instead of by the communist standards we hope its people judge it by — we must admit it has performed very well.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

People , Hope , Way , Failure

“[T]he peninsula flag means two very different things to the two Koreas. In the South it symbolizes a desire for peaceful co-existence, or at most for a unification of equal partners in the reassuringly remote future. In wall posters above the DMZ it has always symbolized the southern masses' yearning for "autonomous unification", meaning absorption by the North. It's worrying to think how inner-track propaganda is certain to misrepresent the South Koreans' eschewal of their state flag for this of all symbols — and at this of all events.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, On the February 8 Parade and the Olympics (February 2018)

Peace , Thinking , Future

“[T]he new line that the Taehan minguk was not founded in August 1948, but instead came into existence when a provisional government was formed in Shanghai in 1919. I don't need to remind anyone of the internationally accepted criteria for statehood. The Blue House seems more interested in downgrading the republic that fought the North than in making a serious case for the statehood of something else. The original modest budget for the 70th anniversary of the ROK's founding has already been cut. The joint North-South commemoration of the March 1st uprising's 100th anniversary next year is likely to make the festivities this August 15 look subdued in comparison.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Housing

“Usually the South Korean left is blamed for the public's lack of patriotism, but it is the right who made blood nationalism a state religion.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

"South Korea: The Unloved Republic" https://web.archive.org/web/20150609101401/http://www.asiasociety.org/south-korea-unloved-republic (14 September 2010), Asia Society
2010s

Religion

“Foreigners assume that because of the war, the two sides must dislike each other more than West and East Germans did. The opposite is the case. Some of my students say, “The North would never attack us, we’re the same people,” as if the war never happened. And North Korea would now be just as committed to unification if it hadn’t.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

War , People

“[A] peculiar pattern has repeated itself every few weeks or so since Moon took office. It goes like this. First the Blue House is caught in some statement or act of disloyalty to the spirit of the alliance — like appointing an unrepentant former enforcer of North Korean copyrights to the second most powerful post in the government. (I don’t mean the prime minister.) South Korean conservatives then shout in chorus, “The Americans won’t stand for this!” Whereupon the White House rushes to say, in effect, “Oh yes we will!””

Brian Reynolds Myers

It seems to revel in making pro-American, security-minded South Koreans look foolish.
2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)

Housing

“Withdrawal of U. S. troops, then confederation, then reunification [under the North Korean regime].”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

“Researchers of the peninsula will get nowhere unless they take a break from their quantifying now and then, and enter into an imaginative sympathy with Korean nationalism, the way any sensible literary scholar assumes a Christian frame of mind when reading Bunyan or Blake.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Having done that one begins to understand why the North appeals strongly to an influential minority in the South. They don’t want to live up there anymore than a moderate Muslim wants to live under the Taliban, but they see it as the purer Korea in many ways, the real deal.
2010s, League Confederation Goes Outer-Track (September 2018)

Way , Imagination , Reading

“North Korea’s interest in confederation is in first disarming and then eliminating the rival state.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

“[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

“We really need to understand that the North Koreans are not as traumatized by things like the "Axis of Evil" remark or things like this Vinson flotilla as some people in the Pyongyang-watching community seem to think.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Understanding , People , Communication , Thinking

“Communism is all about breaking down nationalism, about uniting workers around the world, and North Korea has always been about the opposite, it’s been about racial purity and pride, so remember North Korea was isolated even inside the old east-block, even inside the Soviet block.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Park Jin Keol (March 2012)

World , Communication

“Ultra-nationalism is an appealing ideology; the Third Reich fought to the end, even sending their children into battle... We should not underestimate its appeal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Yonhap (August 2011)

Children

“Koreans in general are very generous about misrepresentations when it’s another Korean doing the misrepresenting.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2000s, Interview with Sun-jung Kim (May 2005)

“The world's complacency about North Korea’s nukes is inspired in large part by memories of stodgy Soviets who had the bomb for 40 years and never used it.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2000s, Interview with Sun-jung Kim (May 2005)

World , Memory , Parting

“Like all men I have a maternal instinct, but I can clutch only so many characters to my breast at one time.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

"Touch of Evil: A selective investigation of recent mysteries and thrillers" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/04/touch-of-evil/304721/ (April 2006), The Atlantic
2000s

Maternity , Time , Men

“I need to say first of all that foreigners are wrong in regarding the DMZ as the "Last Frontier of the Cold War" which is sort of separating a failed and anachronistic communist state from a proud high-tech capitalist one.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

War

“We need only look at the much lower level of anti-Americanism in Vietnam to realize that suffering incurred in wars does not necessarily dictate decades of animosity and fear between peoples. It’s what propaganda does with history — for contemporary political ends — that counts.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

"On the Recent Spate of 'Why North Korea Hates America' Articles" http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2017/05/27/1419/ (27 May 2017), Sthele Press
2010s

History , War , Suffering , People

“[O]ne cannot respect the orthodox version of history without perpetuating the ideology behind it.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2020s, On the United Future Party (2020)

History