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Brian Reynolds Myers
183 quotes
“[H]istorians are going to look back on the North Korean nuclear crisis, and wonder why it took us so long to see what was always staring us in the face. Here we have a rapidly arming country that keeps pledging to eliminate a rival state, which it invaded in 1950 and attacked twice only 7 years ago, and most Western observers still think it can’t possibly be serious. They believe it’s nuclearizing only to formalize a de facto security from American attack that its artillery, aimed squarely on this city, has afforded it for decades.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“South Korea has its most pacifist administration ever... [P]eople here [in South Korea] 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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The example of East Germany exerts a far greater cautionary effect on the North Koreans than Qaddafi’s fate does. The Honecker regime took what Americans and South Koreans keep recommending to North Korea as the “pragmatic” way out of its problems: It began opening up to the West, quasi-formally recognized the rival coethnic state’s right to exist, and focused on improving its own citizens’ standard of living. We all know how that ended.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A] common chant during the candlelight demonstrations here last year was “The people are above the constitution,” a statement most Americans would have a problem with. The very proposal of a North-South confederation runs counter to the South Korean constitution, which does not recognize the dictatorship in the North at all.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By forbearing to march behind the yin-yang flag at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the South Korean athletes are making a bigger sacrifice than the North Koreans, in whose iconography the banner of the DPRK ranks lower than the party standard, which in turn ranks much lower than the Supreme Commander's standard, the flag of the personality cult.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]hose who haven’t yet grasped the ideological realities of the [Korean] peninsula probably never will.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[N]o Blue House can win Pyongyang’s trust without distancing itself from the US ally to a significant degree. At the very least it must present itself as neutral in the nuclear stand-off, but even that probably isn't enough. As Chamfort said, "Anyone placed at exactly the same distance between yourself and your enemy will always appear closer to your enemy." The South Koreans can play go-between only if they restrict themselves to mediating with Washington on the North's behalf.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hat more authoritative, trustworthy source could one ask for than the South Koreans? Whether Kim Dae Jung, Roh Moo Hyun or Moon Jae-in, the message to Washington has always been: "Trust us; we know these guys much better than you do.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“South Koreans are wonderfully tolerant of a foreigner with differing views when the discussion is in Korean, and no foreigners of importance are around. They lose their tempers when they see someone exporting information which — however widely discussed in the Korean press — is thought best kept "in country.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he next few months will decide the fate of the peninsula.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The surrender of something attained heroically and at great cost — something to which the well-being of entire generations has been sacrificed — is far more dangerous to a government than not having it to begin with.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one ever said the regime’s legitimacy reposes in the nukes themselves. It rests on a commitment to the unyielding defense and unification of the Korean nation.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moon camp: You can talk as loudly as you want, and the Americans won’t pay the slightest attention. Least of all Trump. As far as they’re concerned, the North Koreans are communists, and you’re liberal democrats.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Korean nationalism has not only energized the North’s march to nuclear armament, but also exerted a growing appeal on people in the South — the ideological discourse of which republic has received even less attention than the North’s. The average American knows only that in the 1980s liberal democracy replaced authoritarianism here [in South Korea].”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]emory politics are by definition political and shift accordingly. There was a time when both the South Korean left and North Korea were more interested in good relations with Japan than the right here was.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hat the dictatorship wants is presented as something we should want more. Most calls for subversion enrage the North. Not these though. Never these.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he main threat to the South's security is the general lack of public identification with the ROK and its values, as opposed to any widespread vulnerability to the personality cult.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom of speech is the freedom to shout Long Live Kim Il Sung": This has been a commonplace here since Kim Su-yŏng’s famous poem to that effect in 1960. It’s not to be taken too literally or narrowly; one gets the larger meaning. But it’s not that much larger. When dissidents and demonstrators called for freedom of speech in the past it was usually nationalist, anti-American and pro-North speech they had in mind.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[U]ntil the colonial period Korea had one of the world’s longest histories of centralized rule; that the ROK is about a quarter of Germany's size; and that the likelihood of Kim Jong Un devolving any of his power to mayors and governors is zero.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]lthough the “far left” Justice Party is ostensibly in the opposition, 77% of those who support it say that President Moon is doing a good job.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ne's political ideology is inextricable from one's view of history.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The closest thing to criticism of the Blue House our government has issued in recent months has been the statement that inter-Korean relations mustn’t get ahead of denuclearization. Clearly the relations are not in themselves problematic from America’s perspective. This in turn implies approval of the many steps Moon has already undertaken to undermine the ROK’s claim to exclusive legitimacy and its commitment to liberal democratic values.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagining what will have to happen before the Western commentariat begins taking Korean nationalism seriously is an instructive exercise. I thought the two leaders’ trip to Mount Paektu on September 20 might do the trick. But foreigners are still talking only of Moon’s peace-minded pragmatism and Kim’s desire for security guarantees and investment.”
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“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.”
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“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. 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.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These days people like Yi are more likely to end up in the Blue House or KBS than in jail.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While watching Moon and Kim disport themselves on Mount Paektu — the modern nationalist myth of the ancient iconicity of which mountain our media swallowed hook, line and sinker — I was struck by a sobering thought: It has already become easier to imagine Seoul with a Kim Il Sung statue than to imagine Pyongyang without one. Not a lot easier, but easier. We may all disagree about what exactly a North-South league will mean, or even whether it will come to pass. But let’s stop the denials — the old-fashioned denials — that this is what the two Koreas are working on.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The US-ROK alliance’s position on North Korea has been inexorably softening, with only minor and temporary reversals, for over half a century now, while North Korea, arming steadily, has always held fast to its commitment to “final victory,” to unification under its own flag. One need only take a few steps back from the daily news to see where this is headed.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hat really changed a generally pro-socialist South Korean public in 1950 to a right-leaning one was a brief taste of North Korean rule. Kim Sŏng-ch’il, for example, writes in his diary of how the KPA occupation made him identify with the ROK for the first time.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]t was the Yankees and not Korean “reds” – a tiny force even in their 1920s heyday — whom the Japanese authorities were most intent on infamizing. After Hirohito’s surrender all the main tropes went straight into the agitprop of the South Korean left. Thus did the Workers’ Party vilify Yankees as “bloodsuckers” when agitating Jeju islanders, who had been subjected to especially intense Japanese propaganda during the war.”
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“[E]nough of history; as I’ve said before, it’s what’s done with it to contemporary ends that matters. Plenty will be done in the months ahead, to harmonizing North-South effects that the Western commentariat will cheer, and polarizing ROK-internal effects it will continue dozing through. It’s not America’s place to meddle, but we should be aware of what our supposedly liberal-democratic ally is up to.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“LKP carries on the tradition of President Kim Young Sam (1993-98). Like him it has no firm political principles.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What was once the nationalist Left is now the Nationalist left. The candlelight protests of 2016 are mythologized by Moon himself not as class struggle or anti-corruption drive but as the culmination of a long heroic fight for national liberation. The implication — kept tacit to let sleeping American dogs lie — is that by working with Washington against Pyongyang, Park Geun-hye betrayed the race, the minjok.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nationalism is about putting the (ethno-)nation above liberal-democratic and leftist values alike. Once one takes that step, one is not separated from other nationalists by anything irreducible.”
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“Here’s what I find odd. While South Koreans’ anti-Japanese sentiment gets taken at face value as the inevitable result of what happened well before most of them were born, conservatives’ fears for the security of the South, which was last subjected to a deadly military attack in 2010, tend to be treated as laughable delusions.”
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“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.”
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