Tweet of the Day: Event at Duke University with B.R. Myers
Aiming for Unification: Korean Nationalism & Nuclear Crisis w/ B.R. Myers on 10/17/17 @DukeU https://t.co/FVhuLGgV4s pic.twitter.com/C0ELyU2Z3l
— Sino-NK (@Sino_NK) October 3, 2017
Aiming for Unification: Korean Nationalism & Nuclear Crisis w/ B.R. Myers on 10/17/17 @DukeU https://t.co/FVhuLGgV4s pic.twitter.com/C0ELyU2Z3l
— Sino-NK (@Sino_NK) October 3, 2017
From Wikipedia: “Politically, Myers identifies as being left-wing and is a supporter of the Green Party of the United States, veganism, and animal rights.”
Dude is nominally a US Citizen but really never lived here. (again from Wikipedia, “Myers was born in New Jersey to a British mother, spent his childhood in Bermuda and his high school youth in Apartheid-era South Africa, and received graduate education in Germany. He earned an MA degree in Soviet studies at Ruhr University (1989) and a PhD degree in Korean studies with a focus on North Korean literature at the University of Tübingen (1992). Myers subsequently taught German in Japan and worked for the Mercedes-Benz Beijing Liaison Office in 1996.“)
It’s no wonder he thinks the Norks aren’t “real” communists–he thinks they’re nationalist socialists (think Austrian Corporal) fronting as commies–since he’s of the clique who still think no one has tried “Real Socialism®” yet. Just read some of the excerpts of his books and speeches available online and you’ll see. BTW, Andrei Lankov is a big fan of Myers.
It’s a crime that people like that people like Myers are allowed to infect young people with that particular strain of brain fungus. And if he gets his way and the US decamps from South Korea, it will not make either Korea safer from war nor more economically stable
“He earned an MA degree in Soviet studies at Ruhr University (1989)”
Heh. That degree served him well for a solid 18 months.
He would have been better off with a degree in comparative lesbian poetry studies…
…as Soviet unions are rather rare these days but there is a painful surplus of lesbian poets.
…though a degree in socià lists demonstrating against imaginary fascists through fascist acts might get him a consultancy job.
All I can say is that I am professionally familiar with a number of foreign “professors” who have highly “academic” worthless advanced degrees in various imaginary fields such as Global Peace Studies and Indigenous Women’s Rights (and now “North Korean Literature”) and I can say they are all fuçking freaks clinging to contrived ideologies so far divorced from reality that I honestly would rather witness a bullet put in their heads than see any of their hateful influence on those who have to live in the real world.
Remember how communists pretty much always push their agenda with a big helping of genocide against those in favor of competing programs? I witness this first-hand with these people. They will actually say stuff like “anybody who owns a gun should be executed”.
Yeah, I bet. And that’s why I own a gun. Checkmate, bÃtch.
@Mike Morgan, I would recommend reading Myers’s book “The Cleanest Race“. It is in my opinion one of the best reads on North Korea. Myers believes North Korea is neither communist or Stalinist, instead he believes the Kim family has developed a military dominated society led by a racist and maternal regime.
@Chickenhead, I would say Myers has put his advanced to degrees to good use as one of the leading analysts of North Korea. However, generally your point is correct in regards to worthless advanced degrees that lead to graduates working at Starbucks trying to pay $100k in college debt off and then complain the taxpayer should pay off their debt for them because of their poor life choice.
GI, I understand the main points here. And I agree that he may know more about North Korea than I. But his suggestion about removing US troops is at best based on a misunderstanding of all of the neighbors; and — more likely in my cynical mind — anotber attempt to weaken South Korea for a forced “Uni” by the norks.
Based on his biography, he has zero credibility with me.
@Mike Morgan, from what I have read from Myers over the years I have seen nothing to indicate he is pro-North Korean. Also I have read nothing from Myers advocating for withdrawing USFK. In fact he has written that forcing the withdrawal of USFK is the biggest reason driving their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
However, the I think the North Koreans may be miscalculating because the removal of USFK would actually make the decision to conduct a preemptive strike on North Korea easier for the US President. This is because tens of thousands of US troops and their families would no longer be on the peninsula and subject to DPRK retaliation.
If I am misreading what I have read of Myers, I am sorry. Obviously I have cultural baggage and bias against communists in both America and Korea. I may have read what I expected more than what was there; but I disagree about the Norks not being commies. That cult always devolves into a type of mafia-run dystopia. The Austrian Corporal actually ran the same thing as Stalin ran. It takes a more-refined palate than mine to see a real difference between the gulags and Auschwitz. It’s all in who the Central Committee decides are the joos du jure.
Folks can disagree with me on that and I’d love to discuss it over a seasonally-appropriate beverage or pitcher thereof. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
I agree completely that the lack of American troops in Korea would result in a much more unstable and unsafe dynamic between North and South. And it would likely precipitate a rapid and complete withdrawal of all foreign investors and most ex-pats, at least in the short term. I would hate to see that as I still have people I care about in South Korea–many north of Seoul.