Brian Myers

I really like reading Brian Myers, who I consider to be the world's foremost expert on North Korean culture (and perhaps thereby North Korea in general). He teaches at Dongseo University, speaks Korean fluently...well, I'll let you read his Wikipedia page. He's legit, and I highly recommend his A Reader's Manifesto -- An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose, which was originally printed in The Atlantic.

He's got a new book coming out, which means he's in the public eye a little these days. There's an article in today's Voice of America that's worth a read, since it does a nice job of summing up a lot of his ideas in a succinct way.

In his new book, Myers describes North Korea's core race beliefs as a legacy of Japanese colonial rule in the early 20th century.

"After an initial period in which they brutally tried to stamp out all Korean feelings of pride in their nation, the Japanese decided to co-opt it. They did this by saying 'you Koreans, and we Japanese, we are all part of a uniquely pure race, a uniquely ancient race, that goes back thousands and thousands of years, to the same divine progenitor," he explained.

The Japanese left when Tokyo was defeated in World War II, says Myers, but North Korea kept key pillars of their ideology.

"The Korean people, because they are so racially pure, because they are so homogeneous, are morally superior to all other peoples, not tainted by outside influences which, according to the North Korean world view, are inherently evil," he said.

This is the main reason I'm not really looking forward to a unified Korea. There's plenty of Korean pride and wacky ideas about homogeneity to go around in the South as it is. A post-North Korea Korean peninsula would be worse up in Seoul, and especially in Jeolla, where I'm assuming a lot of North Koreans would end up if they chose to move south, but I'm sure there would be a few in this part of the country as well.

Jesus and Tinkerbell

Funny photo via One Free Korea via North Korean Economy Watch. This is a little girl wearing an "I love Jesus" shirt while visiting Mangyongdae in Pyongyang. The shirt also reads "Tinkerbell, Trust and Pixie Dust." Someone making t-shirts in China has a good sense of humor.

Good that the person who took the photo had the sense to block out the girl's face as she (and maybe the guy behind her) could have surely been dead by now had a North Korean authority seen this.

You'll notice the title of this category. I think it's getting to the point where it's relevant to speculate on such theories and I'll try to do some of that going forward. I'll probably take an irreverent tone and focus when I do so. That's my style to begin with, but I think in this case the more irreverent, the more truthful and interesting.

I haven't met any North Koreans aware of, but I think I've lived in South Korea long enough to have some grasp on what might happen should people from the North begin arriving in the South in droves. What strikes me about the above photo is that the girl's skin is very dark. She will be easily identified as a North Korean, or at least a person from the countryside, which, is first and foremost what North Koreans would be in South Korea.

The man behind her also looks like someone from the countryside. I like his grin, but again, and I might be reading a bit too much into this since I know where the photo emanates from, he looks a bit unassuming, which will also be a major theme of a united Korea. With nearly half a century of a western-style economy under their belts, South Koreans are fairly savvy when it comes to money. North Koreans are anything but.