Tag: Books

ROK Drop Book Review: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century

| November 10, 2016

Review

I like reading geopolitical forecasts especially ones involving Northeast Asia which is what made “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century” an interesting read for me.  The book was written by strategist and founder of STRATFOR, George Friedman back in 2008.  The book makes predictions about countries around the world, but here is what he predicts for Northeast Asia in the near term.

George Friedman
George Friedman

Friedman believes that China’s rise will eventually end due to a massive economic recession caused by decades of bad bank loans similar to what happened to Japan and Korea in the 90’s.  The economic fallout will cause deep seated economic inequities to rise to the surface and create political instability in China.  Unlike Japan and Korea that had the social cohesion to implement difficult reforms after their banking crisis, the Chinese government will instead mobilize nationalism and blame foreigners for all their economic troubles.  This will ultimately fail and Friedman predicts the Communist party will be overthrown leaving China possibly a fractured country by the 2020’s.  Considering it is 2016 today I just don’t see the prediction of Communist Party losing power in the 2020’s coming true.

For the Korean peninsula Friedman believes unification will come in the 2020’s.  He foresees the Kim regime collapsing, but does not predict a major war breaking out.  I believe that as long as the Communist party remains in power in China the likelihood of North Korea seeing regime collapse will remain low.  Friedman though believes a unified Korea will be strong, but not as strong as Japan.  Friedman predicts that Russian power will collapse and fracture the country at the same time that Japan is on the rise.  To maintain Japan’s rise it will occupy territories in the Russian Far East that broke away from Russia for its resources.  Japan will greatly expand their naval power to challenge the United States Navy for control of the Pacific Ocean around Japan.  I have a hard time believing Japan would have the domestic political will to occupy parts of Russia considering the public’s deep memory of World War II.

As Friedman gets into the 2050s this is were he gets into the realm of science fiction.  He believes the US will have orbiting “battle stars” in space with manned crews.  These battle stars will have spaced based weapons that will allow the US military to control space.  Friedman believes that today’s US power is centered around the control of the seas where in the future the control of space is what will be the center of US power.  I believe this is in fact true, but I don’t know if manned battle stars is the way the US will control space.  The battle stars Friedman believes will allow the US military to drastically reduces its manpower size.  What manpower that is left for infantry duty will be equipped with battle suits that will make heavy weapons such as tanks obsolete.  Considering the advances in robotics and exoskeletons we are seeing today this doesn’t seem that far fetched.

He believes that tensions between Japan and the United States will grow to the point that Japan launches a sneak attack against the US battle stars and destroys them thus eliminating the US’s advantage in space.  The attack on the battle stars will then be followed by conventional attacks on US military bases by the Japanese to minimize the US military’s ability to counterattack Japan.  Much like with the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, the Japanese are going to hope that the successful attack causes the US to agree to terms favorable to the Japanese that solidifies their dominance in Asia.

While the Japanese and the US are battling, Turkey will join with Japan to attack the Polish empire.  Friedman believes that by the 2050’s Poland will be the powerful hegemon of Eastern Europe.  While battling the Japanese, the US will similarly help the Poles they are allied with to battle the Turks on the ground in Eastern Europe.  The US and its allies ultimately succeed and win the third World War and Friedman believes this will spur a technological and economic Golden Age for the United States in the 2060’s and 2070’s.  The Golden Age will end in the 2080’s when the US will have a showdown with Mexico over control of the American Southwest which by then will be a majority ethnic Mexican population.  Friedman believes that by the 2080’s Mexico will be a world power and by then have the confidence to challenge the United States to regain the American Southwest.  The US military may be called to conduct counterinsurgency operations in places such like Los Angeles.

Conclusion

Who knows if any of what is predicted in this book will come true, but Friedman’s analysis makes constant references to past historical trends to help support his predictions which I found interesting.  The first part of the book I thought was the most believable because you can see some of his predictions coming true.  However, the last half of the book as I said before is in the realm of science fiction so it was not as believable.  In fairness, trying to predict that far out is pretty difficult.  For example could someone after the American Civil War have predicted the nations and military technology used during World War II accurately?  Looking one hundred years out is a difficult proposition for any analyst; regardless the book is a good read for those who enjoy informed geopolitical analysis.

Little Known THAAD Fiction Novel Gains Wide Readership In South Korea

| August 26, 2016

This author seems to believe in leftist conspiracy theories to explain why the US wants to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea:

The deployment of the United States missile defense system, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in Korea is currently a hot potato. It even gave a stir among Asian countries such as China and perhaps in the rest of the world too — some people believe it might trigger the next devastating World War III.

When Korean novelist Kim Jin-myung published his book “THAAD” in August 2014, the advanced U.S. defense system was not well-known to the public. It was only two months after then-USFK Commander Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti first raised the necessity to deploy THAAD in Korea against North Korea’s military aggression, or to be particular, against a nuclear attack.

But the author seems to have been well aware of the indispensable position of the U.S. to allocate the radar machine in Korea to complete its Military Defense (MD) system as Kim’s fiction charts the conspiracy that has to be based on a thorough understanding of the U.S. Army’s military scheme.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it has ever crossed the minds of the Korean left that maybe the US wants the system to better protect its servicemembers and South Korean citizens from increased missile capabilities from North Korea?

ROK Drop Book Review: The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers

| November 3, 2011

I get asked quite often by people not familiar with North Korea what book I would recommend they read to become more familiar with the country?  I have always believed that , “The Two Koreas” by Don Oberdorfer is the best book to read for those wanting to learn about the contemporary history of the Korean peninsula.  However, after reading “The Two Koreas” I would highly recommend for those wanting to get a deeper understanding of North Korea to then read, “The Cleanest Race” by B.R. Myers.

This book I believe is currently the best read about North Korea simply because of the analysis done by Myers in regards to interpreting North Korean propaganda that has provided a whole new perspective on why the country behaves the way it does.  Something else I liked about the book was that it was a quick read.  Unlike other books about North Korea that can be quite an effort to read due to the huge amount of information cited, Myers’ book to me appeared to be written to where the author figured that people reading his book have already read up quite a bit on North Korea so he doesn’t add a whole bunch of additional pages to his book rehashing in depth North Korean history.  Instead Myers keeps the book centered around his analysis of North Korean propaganda that explains why the regime behaves the way it does.

Myers makes it quite evident early in the book that he despises the left and right ideological battles that often encompass debates about North Korea.  Myers believes that people fall back on these ideological biases to explain North Korea simply because so few analysts can understand Korean to be able to read relevant official texts put out by the regime.  I think Myers does have a valid point here that many people who do opine about North Korea do not have the language skills that he has used to develop his views on the North Korean regime.  I don’t think that not being able to speak Korean completely invalidates someone’s opinion, but I do think it enhances the creditability of the viewpoint of someone who does have a deep understanding of the Korean language.

Image of B.R. Myers from the Korea Herald.

That is why I think that Myers’ viewpoint that North Korea is not a hard line Stalinist or Communist government should be taken very seriously.  By the way I don’t believe North Korea is a Stalinist or Communist state either, I have viewed it more of a Soprano State.  Anyway instead of using these common terms to describe the government in North Korea, Myers instead believes that the country is a military dominated society led by a racist and maternal regime.  Myers’ then goes on to provide example after example of North Korean propaganda and other anecdotes that show how the regime brainwashes its people to believe that the:

“Korean people are too pure blooded and therefore too virtuous, to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader. “

That parental leader was at first Kim Il-sung and after his death in 1994 his son Kim Jong-il began to fill that same role.  Myers even goes on to write about how the North Korean regime’s racist propaganda efforts are actually very similar to those of the old Imperial Japanese government that once colonized the Korean peninsula.  As much as the North Koreans proclaim to hate the Imperial Japanese they have in fact perfected their racist policies.  The bottom line is that outside observers need to realize that the North Korean regime uses paranoid race based nationalism to guide their policy decisions.  When looking at North Korea in this context then much of their belligerent actions makes sense.

Something else Myers comments on in the book are that he believes the North Korean refugees in China are “economic migrants” because half of them voluntarily return to North Korea.  I disagree with this because the North Koreans he is referring to I don’t believe should be considered under the term refugee.  That is because it is well known that many North Koreans shuttle back and forth across the border due to the poor economic and food situation in North Korea.  The term refugee should apply to those who want to defect to South Korea or some other nation like the US.  He also claims that the rest of the refugees that do defect remain admirers of the Cult of Kim.  This is not true of all refugees that come to South Korea, though there has been plenty of refugees who have said that due to the brainwashing they have received their entire lives it is hard to let go of the Cult of Kim especially when they hear someone criticizing Kim Il-sung.  I guess it would be like hearing someone criticize George Washington with facts that you believe to be untrue simply because of what you have been taught about the man your whole life.  I think the fact that North Koreans are often treated as second class citizens in South Korea and are not accustomed to a capitalist system that rewards hard work may cause some of the refugees to long for their home land as well.

Though I disagree with him on the refugee issue, I do agree with him on another major point in the book that the North Korean regime does not fear an external attack more than an internal legitimacy crisis.  Myers points out that many foreign observers read the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and assume it mirrors what the North Korean propaganda outlet is putting out to its domestic audience.  Instead here is how Myers says KCNA presents itself in Korean:

“……the DPRK presents itself to the outside world as a misunderstood country seeking integration into the international community, it presents itself to its own citizens as a rogue state that breaks agreements with impunity, dictates conditions to groveling U.N. officials, and keeps its enemies in constant fear of ballistic retribution.  Generally speaking the following rule of thumb applies: the less accessible a propaganda outlet is to the outside world, the blunter and more belligerent it will be in its expression of the racist orthodoxy.”

This fear of an internal legitimacy crisis is why I have long supported that South Korea and the US should fight an information war within North Korea by using defector radio broadcasts and smuggling in subversive media such as Korean dramas into the country to erode the Cult of Kim.  This eroding of the racist and paternalistic ideology of the Cult of Kim is why the regime has so strongly responded to the propaganda balloon launches by North Korean refugee groups within South Korea.

Like I mentioned earlier in this posting I highly recommend that everyone who has basic knowledge about Korea pick up and read this book.  I would not recommend this to be the first book someone reads about Korea because I really think to appreciate this book readers need to have some background in Korean contemporary history.  Once readers have that background, this book is definitely an eye-opening and informative read that will leave people interested in North Korea with a much better understanding of why the regime acts the way it does.

I’ve read his book and it was an eye-opening experience. I agree with your that North Korea is neither Stalinist nor Communist. It’s a kleptocracy. Murder, corruption, and theft…every one from the highest ranking official down to the lowly army private are complicit.

Ya know what… Koreans have never had a nuclear weapon. North Koreans are Koreans too … if they develop ICBM pointed right at Tokyo, Washington DC,& Beijing, Moscow then wouldn’t that make NK / SK an inpregnable fortress? ^^

Thanks for the review, going to pick this one up.

Yes, excellent book and he’s an excellent speaker if you get a chance to see his lecture in person. I too think he’s got nK pegged better than any of the other well-known nK experts though it is interesting to see him and Andrei Lankov debate.

@1 – That is why I consider North Korea to be a Soprano State considering all their criminal enterprises they are engaged in. After reading Myers I now think of it more as a Soprano State supported by a race based ideology that backs the Cult of Kim which helps keep the status quo iin place for the regime elite.

@3 – Definitely pick this book up and it is available on Kindle which is how I read the book.

@4 – If I ever had the opportunity Myers does seem like a very interesting person to listen to. A debate between him and Lankov would be very interesting but I think they would actually be in agreement on most NK issues.

I’ve read this book and think Myers makes some great points. I think he disregards some factors too much such as the role of Confucianism and Kim Il Sung’s use of Protestant Christian themes. That said, his theories make a lot of sense. Personally I think we always get the stinky end of the stick when dealing with DPRK because we operate under the “Communist Oligarcy” template with these guys when it is only partially relevant!

I also enjoyed his dis-assembly of the Korean nation myth. I’ve used the knowledge gained here a couple times to shut down the “we’re a 5,000 year old country” claptrap. You want to look back to Tongun and Old Chosun? Well, I’ll just have to counter that with Pericles and Athens !

I have not read the book so the review by GI Korea is excellent and appreciated.
I could not help but think of the rise of similar race themes in the PRC’s internal propaganda. It would be interesting to see a similar analysis of China’s domestic targeted news and information. In China’s case it takes on a much bigger scope, involving far flung islands and people of Chinese “blood” born in other countries. One has to wonder if China did not learn some lessons from DPRK propaganda, considering the PRC’s history of leaving the international camp, following the break with the USSR and China’s ongoing need to mold a domestic and even off shore population in the free information age.