Myers was born in New Jersey, near Fort Dix.[4] His mother is British,[5] and his father was a U.S. Army officer from Pennsylvania who served in South Korea as a military chaplain,[6][7][8] often helping out local orphans.[9][10] Myers is also a descendant of John F. Reynolds though his father.[11]
Before his appointment at Dongseo University, Myers lectured in North Korean literature and society at the Korea University's North Korean Studies Department.[19] He also taught globalization and North Korean literature at the Inje University Korean Studies Department.[20]
Journalism
Opinion columns
Myers’ opinion columns for the Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal generally focus on North Korea, which he says is not a Marxist-Leninist or a Stalinist state, but a "national-socialist country."[21] He has also commented in The New York Times on the common view of the ROKS Cheonan sinking in South Korea with regard to its perception of North Korea.[22] He stated that there was a lack of outrage over the incident among South Koreans due to the racialized nature of Korean nationalism; in other words, there was no major uproar over the incident in South Korea because of the concept of racial solidarity with the North Koreans that many South Koreans feel, which Myers said overruled patriotism towards South Korea in many cases.[22] Myers stated that inter-Korean racial solidarity manifests itself by South Koreans supporting the North Korean soccer team at the FIFA World Cup and such.[22] He contrasted the racialized nature of South Korean nationalism with the civic nature of U.S. nationalism, stating that South Korea's antipathy over attacks by North Korea was potentially dangerous to the national security of the South Korean state:[22]
South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak.[22]
Myers furthers his argument about the status of Juche as a non-ideology in his book North Korea's Juche Myth (2015). According to his own account, promoting him to write the book was the realization he was making "not the slightest bit of headway" with The Cleanest Race in challenging the conventional wisdom about Juche in the academia.[33]North Korea's Juche Myth develops a three-pronged categorization of North Korean propaganda. Some works are in the "inner track", meant for North Korean eyes only. Others are in the "outer track", meant primarily for North Korean consumption but mindful of the fact that foreigners can access them too. "Export track" propaganda specifically targets foreigners.[34]
Reception and criticism
Myers’ book The Cleanest Race has been challenged by several academic critics.[35]Charles K. Armstrong, then of Columbia University, suggested that the book "gives an intellectual gloss to attitudes many in the West already have about the DPRK".[36]Felix Abt, a Swiss business affairs specialist who lived in North Korea for seven years, describes Myers' claims in The Cleanest Race as "flawed" and "shaky". Abt wrote that it was "rather absurd" to describe Juche as "window-dressing" for foreigners.[37]
South Korean literary critic Yearn Hong Choi also regards the thesis of Myers' Han Sǒrya and North Korean Literature as erroneous:
How can Myers say that he [Han Sǒrya] is not a socialist realist? How can Myers say that Han's thought is not compatible with communist ideology? I can understand Myers’s views on orthodox socialist realism, yet I see socialist realism abundantly present in North Korean literature: North Korean writers still advocate socialist realism. Myers simply does not interpret socialist realism as they do.[38]
Tatiana Gabroussenko points out that Myers is the only Western academic who thinks that North Korean literature does not have the hallmarks of socialist realism.[39]
Scholar Andrei Lankov favorably reviewed The Cleanest Race as taking a "fresh approach" on North Korea.[40] Lankov also says Myers' work is "informative"[41] but is not sure whether his thesis has any relation to reality.[42]
Myers's North Korea's Juche Myth was favorably reviewed by Jan Blinka and Balazs Szalontai.[43]
Despite his progressive view of American politics, he is often regarded as a "conservative" in South Korea because he has a critical view of the "nationalist-left" political views of South Korean liberals and progressives, including the Democratic Party of Korea.[48][49] In a December 2014 interview with conservative Munhwa Ilbo, Myers identified himself as a "conservative and staunch anti-North Korea".[50] He opposes anti-Japanese/anti-imperialist Korean ethnic nationalism and advocates South Korea-based state nationalism.[51] According to the Hankyoreh, left-leaning media in 2011, Myers rated it as having a "typical view of American conservatism".[52]
South Korean liberals and progressives support the view that the Republic of Korea (South Korea) was founded in 1919, when the Provisional Government was established, not 1948, the official establishment of the South Korea government. In contrast, South Korean conservatives recognize Aug. 15, 1948, as the 'founding day' of the Republic of Korea.[53] Myers supported the position of South Korean conservatives by expressing the view that August 15, 1948, should be commemorated by enacting the founding anniversary.[50]
^Patton, Benjamin; Scruby, Jennifer (March 6, 2012). Growing Up Patton. Penguin. pp. 236–237. ISBN9781101560013. Retrieved June 13, 2019. Then, while driving in his jeep one night that winter, he came upon the Waegwan orphanage. 'There were over a hundred children there, and I couldn't believe how shabby they looked,' [Myers] remembers. 'They were barefoot — and it was cold outside. One kid had a belt made out of wire to keep his pants up. They didn't even have anywhere to take a bath — they just had helmets filled with water occasionally dumped over their heads. And, of course, most of them were GI babies who'd been fathered by soldiers and just left at the police station.' If was especially bad to be an orphan in Korea. 'If you can't trace your family back five or six generations, you're nobody,' Myers notes. So he decided to add some theater to his anti-VD campaign: to raise awareness about the orphans' plight in every crevice of the camp — and, true to his mission — use it as a reminder of sexual consequences. Myers raised money among the soldiers to buy clothes and shoes for the orphans. He enlisted Army engineers to build them a proper bathhouse. At the end of every month, Myers sat at the head of the pay line with a 'For the Orphans of Waegwan' donation can. Some of his in-your-face tactics hit too close. When Myers got permission from the mess sergeants to bring a group of children to the mess for Thanksgiving dinner, for instance, one of his commanders, a lieutenant colonel, lashed out. 'He pulled me aside and said, "This is our Thanksgiving, not theirs. What the hell are they doing here? You have no business doing this and you'll pay for it" — the implication being that he'd get me,' Myers remembers. 'And this is a guy who'd just come from church!'
^Charles K. Armstrong, "Trends in the Study of North Korea," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 70, 2011; and Suzy Kim, "(Dis)orienting North Korea," Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3, September 2010.
^Charles K. Armstrong, "Trends in the Study of North Korea," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 70, 2011, p 360.
^Abt, Felix (2014). A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom. Tuttle Publishing. pp. 62–63. ISBN9780804844390.
^Gabroussenko, Tatiana (2010). Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 5. ISBN978-0-8248-3396-1.
^"Pyongyang's Familiars — B.R. Myers". Sthele Press. April 2023. By the way, I used to live in New Mexico too, in the small town of Los Lunas, which is now less famous for having had Bo Diddley as deputy sheriff than for being the site of the hardware store in Breaking Bad. I took the 2-hour drive up to Los Alamos circa 2000, when I delivered an abandoned husky to the state's only husky rescue service.
^Myers, Brian Reynolds (January 3, 2024). "No, Kim Hasn't Given Up on Unification". Sthele Press. Busan, South Korea. Archived from the original on January 8, 2024. [The] Minjoo Party, [is] a nationalist, anti-immigration, pro-Chinese, Ukraine-indifferent, none-too-LGBT-friendly party of a sort those papers would rage against if it were in Europe. But the Council on Foreign Relations works in mysterious ways.
^Myers, Brian Reynolds (August 11, 2017). "Low-Level Confederation and the Nuclear Crisis (in 2 parts)". Sthele Press. Yi Hae-sŏng, a young podcaster, was one of many conservatives who lamented Moon's reference to 1919 as the year in which the Republic of Korea was established. With those and other words, the president declared himself the heir to a nationalist and not a constitutional-democratic tradition, a man who will rule more in the spirit of the exile government that strove to liberate the minjok than of the republic that joined America in resisting North Korean aggression.
