Brian Reynolds Myers: Likeness

“This can be seen by their inordinate horror of the financial and social disruptions of unification, which in the past has actuated deliberate exaggeration of the likely costs, and which still induces many Moon-supporters to propose maintaining a one-nation, two-state system indefinitely. We see it also in the general indifference to human rights abuses in the North”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, League Confederation Goes Outer-Track (September 2018)
Context: [O]bservers regard the word nationalism (now a pejorative in the West) as inappropriate for what they see as a natural, healthy yearning to make the peninsula whole again. But a distinction must be made between: a) feelings of ethnic community, pride in a shared cultural tradition, and a sense of special humanitarian duty to one’s own people, all of which West Germans felt in 1989-90 despite being generally anti-nationalist, and b) an ideological commitment to raising the stature of one’s race on the world stage. What holds South Korean nationalists together is b) and not a). This can be seen by their inordinate horror of the financial and social disruptions of unification, which in the past has actuated deliberate exaggeration of the likely costs, and which still induces many Moon-supporters to propose maintaining a one-nation, two-state system indefinitely. We see it also in the general indifference to human rights abuses in the North, and in the great pleasure and pride the ROK's envoys showed last week at being in the dictator’s presence.

Support , Past , Indifference

“Those who treat "axis of evil" remark and the bombing of Libya as watershed traumas in the North Korean psyche are really lampooning their own narrative, because if a regime has spent 50 or 60 years defying, humiliating and threatening a trigger-happy superpower like the United States, and the greatest shocks it has been dealt in return have been a rude line in a speech and an attack on a completely different country, its safety clearly does not depend on developing a new kind of weapon.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Its conventional artillery must have been protecting it very well indeed.
2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Evil , Dependency , Country , Happiness

“For decades the basic message has been, "Dump the leadership, because it lives high on the hog while you toil and starve." That’s the sort of sloganeering that might help undermine a communist state. It won’t work in a far-right, ultra-nationalist state. The pomp that surrounds Kim Jong Un is the whole nation’s pomp, as it were. I have urged American officials who ask me about propaganda to encourage a nationalist approach to it, stressing the North’s disgraceful dependence on China, contrasting the North with an internationally respected South that has really put Korea on the map.I’m not sure this will be enough though. The crucial issue, from a nationalist North Korean’s perspective, is likely to be: Which of the two states is more intent on righting the wrongs foreigners have done to us? Which state wants to unify the peninsula, the nation? And the South all too obviously allows the North to play the heroic role of the sole unifying force. Park Geun-hye made efforts to rectify that neglect but it was too little, too late. And now a very different president is in power.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Effort , Help , Dependency

“[T]he North’s ideology glorifies the heart over the mind, instincts over consciousness, which makes rash decisions more likely to be made, even quite low down the military command structure. There is therefore a significant danger of some sort of limited clash at any time. But that has always been the case.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

Decision , Time , Heart

“Since Moon's takeover the peninsula has become less like divided Germany than ever. The ROK has abandoned the competition for legitimacy, instead ceding the North’s superiority on nationalist grounds while reaffirming that these matter more than liberal democratic ones. I’m not sure a league will ever come about, but if it does, it will hitch a proudly radical nationalist state to an unloved, moderate-nationalist one too shamefaced to celebrate its own founding. If the South is already unwilling to criticize the North, or to renew a commitment to its own constitutional values, it’s hardly likely to mount a strong defense of human rights later on.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Strong

“[I]f we’re going to jeer at North Korea for being a de facto monarchy, we must also acknowledge the main advantage of such a system: no divisive squabbling over who has the right to rule. On my book tour for “The Cleanest Race” I used the example of my British mother: a firm supporter of the monarchy with different estimations of the various royals. She doesn’t like the idea of Charles becoming king, but accepts that it will and must happen.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Books , Idea , Support

“[South] Koreans are more comfortable with Americans who behave like Americans.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Colin Marshall (February 2015)

“[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

“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)

“[I]f Kim Il Sung had won the war, Korea today would not look like North Korea. I think it would still be a much less free and prosperous place than the South is now, but it would resemble China and Vietnam more than the North now does. Its system has been shaped by the need to distinguish itself, to seal itself off from the rival state, and to pursue nuclear armament.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

On why the North Korean regime is so oppressive
2010s, North Korea's Unification Drive (December 2017)

War , Thinking

“[A]t the risk of sounding like a broken record: this is a far-right, militarist state. Such states tend to experience uprisings only when they have failed by militarist or nationalist standards, as the Argentinian junta did in 1982.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

“[R]elative lack of popularity is not as important as the lack of popularity of a president in South Korea, where there is no bedrock state support to keep people patriotic even when they dislike a leader. But we Americans are more like the North Koreans in that regard. Does our patriotism rise and fall depending on who is in the White House? If we don’t like a president, do we start finding America’s enemies more likeable? No. We should therefore not assume that Kim Jong Un’s relative lack of stature means that support for the state is weakening.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

People , Support , Housing , Dependency

“North Koreans can frequent black markets and still consider themselves good citizens, as was impossible in the communist East Bloc. So the situation now is more like Japan or Germany in 1944, say, than like East Germany in the 1980s. Widespread government corruption? Check. An entire population of economic criminals? Check. Constant griping about the state, the party, even some joking about the leader? Check. Even good Nazis had their Hitler jokes. A general readiness to fight for the state? Well, there’s certainly more readiness in the North than in the South.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Fight

“If South Koreans want a league with the North, we Americans can only wish them well. The problem is that the current military alliance may embolden them to take this step without proper thought — and then embolden them to nullify the framework as soon as they sour on it. How the North is likely to respond can be imagined, considering the two deadly acts of aggression that followed the South’s abandonment of the Sunshine Policy in 2008.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Imagination , Problem

“These days people like Yi are more likely to end up in the Blue House or KBS than in jail.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

People , Housing

“In Germany, it's, let's say it's 5:59 and you're heading for the bakery or whatever and it's due to close at 6. The German will walk right up to that door and close it right in your face, they will lock it on the other side of that glass door with a shrug, like "sorry". A [South] Korean would never do that, ever. And, and this is what I like about them.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Colin Marshall (February 2015)

“"What belongs together, is growing together again," Willy Brandt said in 1989. The formulation implies a more balanced and grass-rootsy process than actually ensued in Germany — or is likely to take place here. Koreans belong together and will someday grow back together. But if the South doesn’t take the upper hand in training and guiding that growth, the North will.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Grass , Training

“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 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

“[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