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The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters |  | Author: B.R. Myers
Publisher: Melville House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 93270
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 7.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1933633913
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.375095193
EAN: 9781933633916
ASIN: 1933633913
Publication Date: January 26, 2010
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Product Description
Understanding North Korea through its propaganda
What do the North Koreans really believe? How do they see themselves and the world around them?
Here B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.” In a concise but groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled.
What emerges is a regime completely unlike the West’s perception of it. This is neither a bastion of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy, but a paranoid nationalist, “military-first” state on the far right of the ideological spectrum.
Since popular support for the North Korean regime now derives almost exclusively from pride in North Korean military might, Pyongyang can neither be cajoled nor bullied into giving up its nuclear program. The implications for US foreign policy—which has hitherto treated North Korea as the last outpost of the Cold War—are as obvious as they are troubling. With North Korea now calling for a “blood reckoning” with the “Yankee jackals,” Myers’s unprecedented analysis could not be more timely.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
Excellent insights into how NK's ideology really works September 1, 2010
Kid Kyoto (United States)
North Korea's ideology is often mocked or dismissed but rarely examined in the west. Often it is simplified as 'Stalinist' but Stalinism refers to the oppression of the regime, not to the ideology that justifies it.
In this slim volume (169 pages plus endnotes) author BR Myers painstakingly examines how North Korean ideology evolved from the end of World War II to the present and how it affects North Korea's behavior and world view.
He explains that despite his Soviet loyalties Kim Il Sung had little knowledge of communism and when it came time to build a national ideology he turned to the one system he was familiar with, Japanese Imperialism. The comparisons between Japan's pre-war race-based ideology and North Korea's statements are striking. The legitimacy of the North Korean regime does not rest on liberating the workers of the world, quite the opposite. It builds its legitimacy on protecting the pure and innocent race of Korea and opposing the South, not because of politics, but because the South is a Yankee colony that allows its culture and blood to be defiled by foreign influences. Myer backs up this claim with citations from North Korean films, novels, posters and broadcasts - often reprinting the works for readers to see.
He believes that understanding this worldview explains some of North Korea's irrational claims and policies. It also shows why North Korea is so reluctant to liberalize along the Chinese model; any step away from its ideology of purity could remove the regime's legitimacy.
I have two frustrations with this book however. First Myers takes several shots at other scholars, these academic feuds distract from the subject. Secondly with thousands of North Korean refugees in the South and more arriving every year, Myers could have done a lot more to test his theory by interviewing them and seeing what North Koreans really think.
But this is still an insightful work and another solid addition to my growing North Korea library.
 The Cleanest Race May 10, 2010
Raymond W. Ninness (Bedford, New Hampshire)
4 out of 30 found this review helpful
Perhaps the hardest read I have ever experienced!! The Author does all he can to try and assure the reader that he is highly educated, and intellectually superior to anyone reading the book. And therefor can write in such an intricate and rambling manner, as to confuse issues and make reading and understanding this book all but impossible.
The subject is an important one, toward understanding North Korea, but unfortunately, the Author lost his audience with his writing style, or lack thereof..
 Worth Reading April 18, 2010
William M. Simonton
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
I remember reading North Korean publications (in Korean) in late 1976 and 1977 pretending to take a second BA to finish ROTC, because of the Vietnam War it was popular for liberals and leftist to be anti-Park Chung Hee (ROK) and that North Korean Kim Il Song was just a nationalist and the bad things about him was US propaganda and so when I would tell these people about all the propaganda basically deifying Kim and I would be told by the grad students that I was believing South Korean propaganda and when I would say it was a North Korean publication, they would then say I didn't translate it correctly and even after I would tell them that the translation was with Prof. Lukcoff, they wouldn't believe it. Prof. Myers mentions B. Cummings who I remember in U of Washington paper (1975) reading him saying that Park Chung Hee's export driven economic development was selling out the Koreans to US corporations and banks and would leave Korea bankrupt. Of course the opposite happened. I haven't followed North Korean propaganda for years but the pictures of the propaganda were interesting for us that can read them (I wish there were more). Prof. Myers ideas connecting the themes with wartime Japanese propaganda was interesting but I wish the book had more examples and his connecting both Kim's appearance with oddly, a motherly appearance, non-communist and non-Confucian nature of the propaganda, was again very interesting but I wish there were more examples. I read the book in two nights which for me is quick. The book had one idea that disturbs me, the propaganda is believed by the masses and so the North will not collapse because of its internal problems. I have been hoping since 1994 that it would collapse and Korea could be peacefully reunified.
A different analysis of North Korea April 16, 2010
Michael A. Duvernois (Minneapolis, MN United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
There's probably more analysis of the sexual politics and iconography of North Korea than most folks need, but even so, this is an important contribution to understanding the weirdness above the 38th parallel. I would recommend a variety of books to read to try to understand North Korea, but this is an especially important book for really taking in the mythologies of North Korea and understanding them. We often have a tendency (perhaps a projection even) to discount belief in propaganda. Mostly notably, few discussion of Bin Laden take seriously his belief in his own statements. This discounting of propaganda, in the North Korean context, has lead to dramatic failures of serious negotiations. Agreements and treaties have been made without understanding that the propaganda ("we're using the other parties to the treaty") in fact reflect what the North Korean leadership truly believes.
The author hopes that by understanding the mythology, the iconography, and the propaganda of North Korea we can understand the very real beliefs of the North Korean leadership. As has been pointed out many times, Mein Kampf was ignored as propaganda, but contained a very real set of beliefs and planned actions which guided Hitler through the war and the Holocaust. If only people would read the beliefs as they are believed...
A useful perspective April 16, 2010
Al Bacone (SoCal, USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Other reviews have adequately summarized the content of the book, so I'll avoid detailed criticism here. I can not be certain how close Myers' views are to reality, but I can say that this is the first model of North Korean culture I've read that makes cohesive sense of the regime's behavior and the startling lack of Soviet-style jadedness in the people that support it. As I said, we can't be sure if Myers is right here or not, but he makes a compelling case and offers a valuable perspective.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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