Brian Reynolds Myers: State

“South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Strong , Feeling

“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

“Revolutions are usually a matter of people picking up the power of a state in disintegration, a government that has lost the will to enforce its laws.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Of the two states on the peninsula, I see the South as closer to fitting that bill. There were recent reports of demonstrators around the THAAD site stopping and checking police cars.
2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

People , Law

“For most North Koreans the state equals the race, equals the country. This is where the North has been so much more successful than what I call the "Unloved Republic" of South Korea.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

There, as in Weimar Germany, the state is seen as having betrayed the race. When Moon Jae-in looks back on the history of the ROK he holds up only the anti-state riots and protests as high points.
2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Success , Country

“No true liberal-democratic ally of the United States would think of leaguing up with an anti-American dictatorship”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)
Context: To assume that the two Korean administrations do not already see each other as confederates, and behave accordingly, albeit discreetly, is like assuming that a man and woman planning a marriage are not yet having sex. When we ask for Moon’s help in getting the other half of the peninsula to denuclearize, we are in effect asking this fervent nationalist to help remove the future guarantor of a unified Korea’s security and autonomy. Why should he comply? The only remaining point of the US-ROK alliance is to ease the transition to a confederation — which would obviate that alliance altogether. The recent news of South Korean violations of sanctions (and of a presidential award just given to the main importer of North Korean coal) is merely illustrative. It’s trivial in comparison to the basic truth staring us in the face: No true liberal-democratic ally of the United States would think of leaguing up with an anti-American dictatorship, let alone one still in the thrall of a personality cult.

Thinking

“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

“The South Korean flag continues to function at least in South Korea, not as a symbol of the state but as a symbol of the race.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

Interview with Chad O'Carroll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obWvR92I-lw&feature=youtu.be&t=1171 (2014)
2010s

“Japan's racialized worldview equated virtue with strength, the North Koreans are taught that their virtue has rendered them as vulnerable as children in an evil world — unless they are protected by a great leader who keeps a watchful eye on military readiness. Unfortunately for the United States, there is no place in this for any improvement in relations between the two countries.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Children , World , Evil , Country

“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

“Let me highlight the fact, then, that a mistrust of outsiders – as manifested by and in states for thousands of years – is very different from an ideology asserting that one uniquely pure race is morally superior to all others. Such thinking was by no means the norm even in European fascism. It runs directly counter to Marx.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Thinking

“North Korea cannot survive forever on the public perception of state legitimacy alone. The more it loses its economic distinctiveness vis-à-vis the rival state, the more the Kim regime must compensate with triumphs on the military and nuclear fronts. Another act of aggression against the Republic of Korea may well take place in the months ahead, not only to divert North Korean public attention from the failures of the consumer-oriented 'Strong and Prosperous Country' campaign, but also to strengthen the appeasement-minded South Korean opposition in the run-up to the presidential election in 2012.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Failure , Strong , Country

“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

“South Korea has its most pacifist administration ever… [P]eople here do not identify strongly with their state. No public holiday celebrates it, neither the flag nor the coat of arms nor the anthem conveys republican or non-ethnic values, no statues of presidents stand in major cities. Few people can even tell you the year in which the state was founded. When the average [South Korean] man sees the [South Korean] flag, he feels fraternity with [ethnic] Koreans around the world.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, North Korea's Unification Drive (December 2017)

People , World , Feeling , Holiday

“[T]he once-marginal myth that the [South Korean] republic came into existence in Shanghai in 1919 as a nationalist state has become orthodox with remarkable speed.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Speed

“Many intellectuals here [in South Korea] admire the North for standing up to the world. It’s a right-wing sort of admiration, really, for a resolute state that does what it says. More common than admiration are feelings of shared ethnic identity with the North. We are perhaps too blinkered by our own globalism to understand how natural they are.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

World , Feeling , Understanding , Nature

“The left wing and the right wing in this country [South Korea] are equally invested in keeping alive the myth of a far-left North Korea. This is what exasperates me. I realize that I'm up against so many different constituencies, each of which has an interest in maintaining the myth of North Korea as a far left state.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2014)

Country

“North Korea enjoys an important advantage over its rival, for in the Republic of Korea ethno-nationalism militates against support for a state that is perceived as having betrayed the race. South Koreans' "good race, bad state" attitude is reflected in widespread sympathy for the people of the north and in ambivalent feelings toward the United States and Japan, which are regarded as friends of the republic but enemies of the race”

Brian Reynolds Myers

2010s, North Korea's State Loyalty Advantage (December 2011)
Context: Korea's northern border remains easy to cross, and North Koreans are now well aware of the prosperity enjoyed south of the demilitarized zone, Kim Jong-il continues to rule over a stable and supportive population. Kim enjoys mass support due to his perceived success in strengthening the race and humiliating its enemies. Thanks in part to decades of skillful propaganda, North Koreans generally equate the race with their state, so that ethno-nationalism and state-loyalty are mutually enforcing. In this respect North Korea enjoys an important advantage over its rival, for in the Republic of Korea ethno-nationalism militates against support for a state that is perceived as having betrayed the race. South Koreans' "good race, bad state" attitude is reflected in widespread sympathy for the people of the north and in ambivalent feelings toward the United States and Japan, which are regarded as friends of the republic but enemies of the race.

People , Feeling , Support

“I have tried to draw attention to South Korea’s dangerous state-loyalty deficit, by which I mean citizens’ lack of a sense of identification with their republic. In doing so I have noted the obvious parallels with South Vietnam, another state fatally weakened by nationalism. On this point too, I seem to be talking to the wall. Even Americans interested in the nuclear crisis feel no need to learn about party politics in South Korea. It’s a thriving, prosperous democracy, and that’s all that matters.”

Brian Reynolds Myers

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

Feeling , Democracy , Sense , Learning

“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)