B.R. Myers on the Aftermath of the Trump-Kim II Hanoi Summit
ROK Drop favorite, Professor B.R. Myers has posted his thoughts about the outcome of the Hanoi summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. In the article Myers says President Trump did the right thing walking away from the summit which will probably not win Professor Myers too many fans in academia and the media:
Donald Trump did the right thing in Hanoi, in a rare accession of good sense, but only because Kim Jong Un, in an equally rare lapse of it, tried to get too much at once. Conservative South Koreans on Youtube cheered the summit collapse as the end of America’s efforts to appease Pyongyang. They also mocked Moon Jae-in for having announced, on the very next day, that he will continue pushing for what I call the ethnic exemption from sanctions, namely, permission for some degree of inter-Korean economic cooperation.
In fact Moon understands the Americans far better than his opponents do. He knows the softening of our resolve has quite a way to go yet. If talks between Pyongyang and Washington do not resume very soon, we can expect the usual American op-ed writers to back Moon’s call for the ethnic exemption. If Kim is smart he will offer just enough to bring it about, and visit Seoul to help force the Americans’ hand.
B.R. Myers
You can read more at the link, but Myers believes that the Moon administration will now highly pressure the Trump administration to allow an “ethnic exemption” to sanctions to reopen Kaesong and the Kumgang Resort tours. I don’t see President Trump bending on this unless the North Koreans give something up just as valuable in return.
Myers in the rest of the article also provides a good historical analysis how the Korean left was just as much if not more collaborating with the Imperial Japanese than the Korean right. This is significant because with the failure of the summit, the Moon administration in South Korea will likely further push anti-Japanese sentiment to create a common cause with North Korea.
The Korean left also uses Japanese sentiment to label their domestic political enemies on the right as pro-Japanese collaborators even though historically the left was probably the more significant collaborators.
GI, your blog is yours, and ROKDROP does you great credit. I offer the following as an opinion of another’s opinions, not a criticism of this very enjoyable oasis:
Myers ends his blog with “It’s not America’s place to meddle, but we should be aware of what our supposedly liberal-democratic ally is up to.” As he “is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal”, according to Wikipedia, I assume he is invited to “all the right parties.”
I regularly suspect that Professor Myers somehow believes no one in the Trump Administration–like Mike Pompeo or Pat Shanahan–knows anything at all. His his left-handed slams on Trump show him to be a very bitter man. Hanging out with people in academia might make one that way. I would respect him more if he was more apolitical, like Victor Davis Hanson. However that might get him kicked out of his sewing circle.
Oh, I’m sure he’s much more intelligent than I am, knows ever so much more about Korean Culture than I do, and believes at least 50 percent of what he writes; but he literally compares his thoughts to Goethe (author of Faust) and Spengler (author of The Decline of the West) in this blog. Because 19th and 20th Century German ruling-class politicians who wrote books criticizing Western Culture really know how to predict 21st Century Koreans.
Not exactly my cup of tea, eh wot…
Sorry if anyone is triggered by any of that.
” even though historically the left was probably the more significant collaborators. ”
I’m a newcomer to Korean politics and history and found this statement very interesting. Do you have any recommended readings about this? All I’ve read is mainstream stuff propagating the opposing view.