Customer Reviews

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters

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I knew that B. R. Myers was a contributing editor, I believe, for "The Atlantic," my favorite periodical. I had no idea that he was also a student of the Korean Peninsula, especially the "Hermit Kingdom" north of the 38th parallel. Christopher Hitchens reviewed this book for "Slate" today, and after catching it this morning, I drove to my local Barnes & Noble in the vague hope they might have a copy. I was shocked that they had a copy in stock. And I was not able to put this fascinating book down.

Myers objective is, by explaining North Korea in the roots of its modern past, to try to make some form recommendations as to how the world community can deal with this strange and blinkered land. His ultimate conclusion is, unfortunately, rather gloomy, arguing essentially that containment and "benevolent neglect" are the only methods to deploy against a regime that, by its own self-definition, is as fixed and unchangeable as a steel and cement mold. All this short of actual military confrontation no one exterior to North Korea wants.

But, this is not the best part of the book. Myers advances and, I think, proves that North Korea is purely a product of its all-pervasive propaganda which literally soaks every aspect of daily life, twenty-four seven, learned in part from the brutal occupation tactics of the Japanese between 1905-1945. And this propaganda supports the two pillars of this Orwellian moonscape, the military and the Kim clan, arguably the most successful crime family since the fictional Corleones. North Korea is no longer properly understood as a "communist" society. Indeed, the very word was removed from the latest Constitution in favor of the long-evolving bogus governmental policy of "Juche," the military elites celebrated as a class in support of a paranoid "imperial family" who have gone to absurd lengths to soldify their dread power over a population kept in absolute, deliberate ignorance of the world outside; even going to far as to use low-level malnutrition as a method of social control. Myers uses mutitudinous examples of past and contemporary North Korean governmental propaganda to illustrate the depths to which this control is exercised. And the consistent keys struck over and over are: (a) absolute fear of the "outside," especially South Korea, Japan, the United States, and even China to a limited extent; (b) the fostering of a divine cult around the ruling family (even suggesting the future "quasi-resurrection" of the dynastic founder); (c) glorification of the military establishment, including the nuclear programme as nationalist expression; and (d) institutionalized racism that also extendes into eugenic practices to keep the Korean race "pure." And all this is overlaid with a perverse form of warped Confucianism where deference to authority is posited as the highest of social aspirations. Put in radically simpler terms, North Korea is best understood less as nation-state than religious cult where the "Dark Other" is the rest of the earth itself.

I also note that Myers descriptive prose is very powerful, but made more so by ample visual examples in the book which are not "filler" but artfully chosen to illustrate main points. Excellent visual and written editing all the way around.

I admit that using propaganda alone as a basis for historical conclusions is usually a spotty exercise. But in a nation where that propaganda is the essence of the state and the people its creations from cradle to grave, I think the basis far more firm than, say, it would be in a discussion of modern China, for example, or Soviet-era Roumania. On this sure footing, and backed by what is obviously years of work and scholarship, Myers makes a complelling case that any dealings with North Korea must be informed by an understanding of how it sees itself, as horrible that vision may be.

Recommended without reservation, especially to people interested in political science, cultural history, and East Asian Studies.

This is the rarest of books: a genuinely original analysis that demolishes most of what we thought we knew about something, in this case North Korea. For decades, virtually all of us have blithely assumed that North Korea's ideology was Juche, Stalinism, Confucianism, or some combination thereof. Myers makes a meticulously researched, closely reasoned argument that it is none of these things. On the contrary, the DPRK is an ethno-centric nationalist state led by a beloved, androgynous Parent Leader. In Pyongyang's world view, Koreans are a pure, childlike race, virtually incapable of sin, or of surviving in a world of vicious foreigners. Thankfully, the Great Leader -- the mother-like Kim Il Sung -- is there to protect them, followed by the even more maternal Kim Jong Il. These innocent people are constantly threatened, of course, by those vicious, cowardly, hook-nosed Americans, who must be resisted at all costs. This analysis is of great value in itself, but it also has important policy implications, not the least of which is that since the Americans are the mortal enemies of the Korean people, genuine compromise with them on something like the DPRK's nuclear programs is unthinkable.

Until recently, virtually the only books available in English on North Korea (or even South Korea) were the tendentious, self-indulgent polemics written by Bruce Cumings, professor of history at the University of Chicago. Cumings was largely discredited long ago, and Myers finishes the job. It is hard to imagine he will ever be taken seriously again. Rather, for anyone involved in international relations or Asian affairs, "The Cleanest Race" is quite simply the best book ever written on North Korea, and, for as long as that wretched place endures, this book will be the definitive study of the regime and the starting point for all analysis of the DPRK.

I have a couple complaints: many of the North Korean propaganda pictures Myers uses to support his argument are so small one can barely make them out, and, incredibly for such an otherwise serious piece of analysis, this book contains no index. (Note to Myers: Next time, consider another publisher.) Perhaps these problems will be addressed in the next edition. But these are mere quibbles. All that matters is this: if your work involves East Asia or international relations, stop reading and order this book. Do it now. And resume reading the minute "The Cleanest Race" arrives.

"The Cleanest Race" is a sometimes muddled and biased, but ultimately useful effort to explain North Korea's internal and foreign policies. Myers states that his conclusions are the result of researching the nation's domestic propaganda agenda, and believes the 'Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea' (DPRK) is a "paranoid nationalist, 'military-first' far-right state whose popular support now derives mostly from pride in its military might." Ergo, it cannot be pressured or cajoled to give up its nuclear program.

Continuing, Myers believes that this ideology has generally enjoyed the support of the North Korean people . . . "without a ubiquitous police presence or a fortified northern border" (with China). That conclusion is a serious stretch - most other accounts report a strong secret police environment in which the continually indoctrinated general populace are encouraged and rewarded for reporting disloyal acts of fellow citizens. Further, while its northern border with China is lightly patrolled, potential emigres are strongly deterred by frequent Chinese sweeps that capture and return those who successfully cross over. Once returned, they face severe punishment in North Korea. Myers continues, with "about half of 'economic migrants' voluntarily return," and "the rest remain fervent admirers of Kim Il Sung" - patent nonsense, per other sources. Myers also defies reality by contending that the North Korean doctrine of 'Juche' is confusing, not understandable, and not adhered to, when most other sources have no problems contending it refers to making the nation's destructive effort to be internally self-sufficient. Finally, his several citations of Bruce Cummings without qualification is unnerving because that author's scholarship on Korea has been challenged by a number of academic critics, and his work has stirred up more controversy than that of most other historians (Wikipedia).

Returning to reality, Myers says that North Korea presents itself to the world as a misunderstood country seeking integration into the international community, while to its own citizens it presents itself as a state dictating conditions to groveling U.N. (and U.S.) officials, and keeping its enemies in constant fear of ballistic retribution. Further, the DPRK has never given up its dream of fomenting a nationalist revolution in 'south Korea.'

"A History of North Korean Official Culture - 1910-" forms Part I of Myers' book. Japan invaded Korea in 1905, and stayed 40 years until forced out after WWII. Leader Kim Il Sung, contrary to state-generated myth, sat out WWII in the U.S.S.R., but had been a commander with Mao in China's earlier battle with Japan. (Sidelight - Kim's brother interpreted for the Japanese.) Myers also asserts that Kim had read little before being put in charge by the Soviets. Tens of thousands of North Koreans fled to China during the 1995-97 famine, eroding the information embargo that allowed the DPRK to falsely claim that South Korea was more impoverished. The DPRK then told its citizens that the reason South Korea had a higher standard of living was because of the North's 'military-first' policy which repeatedly has forced other nations to back down. South Koreans were also reported to be deeply unhappy about defilement by the presence of foreigners, and wanting to join with the DPRK. Myers believes that it is essential that North Korean citizens believe it is the better Korea, or they will decide that the South is better able to rule the entire peninsula. Therefore, "a decade of generous and unconditional aid from South Korea has not generated even a modicum of good will from North Korea."

Friendly nations (eg. Laos) are described to DPRK nationals as 'tributary' - hosting Juche study conferences to learn from North Korea, presenting eulogies to the Leader, and congratulating the DPRK on important anniversaries. China, an exception, is described more as a partner. Nonetheless, pregnant returnees from China undergo forced abortions to avoid 'contaminating the blood-line.' Similarly, it is also 'necessary' to keep foreigners away from residents in Pyongyang, its capital and showcase city - hence, separate hotels, eating facilities, buses, and 'minders' prevent mingling.

U.S. (inherently evil) aid is rationalized to North Koreans as compensation for economic blockades, etc. Myers says the government doesn't talk about the U.S. "bombing North Korea flat" because this would undermine the Leader's reputed power; yet, somehow, Myers believes it is still logical for North Korea to speak of alleged atrocities committed by American foot-soldiers.

Bottom-Line: Much of "The Cleanest Race" is taken up with a mystical, pointless effort to classify North Korea and its leadership as masculine or feminine, and still more by academic quibbling over whether its historical background is Confucianism, Stalinism, nationalism, or pre-war Japanese Fascism. Myers also contends that race, not socialism, is key to North Korean ideology - unsubstantiable given government control of production, commerce, and pay. (However, claiming North Korean ideology is a mix of race AND socialism is credible.) Myers also focuses on what the regime tells its own citizens, and makes a good case for two key contentions: 1)If a decade of South Korean aid to North Korea has brought no gratitude, the U.S. hoping to ingratiate itself through aid is hopeless - it will simply become evidence of our subservience. 2)Given the constant political indoctrination at all levels, it makes little sense to think that Leader Kim (or successor) could demilitarize to any extent without risking a military coup.

On the other hand, who would have thought Deng Xiaoping, 'three time loser' under Chairman Mao, would rise after Mao's death and lead China through such dramatic foreign policy and internal reversals that it became a self-sufficient economic powerhouse in only three decades?

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.

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.

B.R. Myers has written a controversial book on North Korea, "The Cleanest Race". Myers (no friend of the North Korean regime) believes that Kim Jong Il still has widespread popular support, and that Kim Il Sung had even more. This observation, if true, would explain a lot of things. Why is North Korea one of the few Communist regimes which has neither reformed itself (like China) nor collapsed (like most of the others). Myers believes that the Korean Workers' Party has survived by skilfully manipulating nationalist sentiments among the North Korean population (like Cuba?).

In fact, Myers goes much further than this. He argues that the North Korean regime has never really been Communist or Marxist. Rather, it has always been a nationalist and racist regime, more similar to fascism than to Communism. Its legitimacy isn't based on securing a high standard of living through a centralized planned economy, but rather on preserving the moral and racial purity of the North Korean people. Such a goal is possible even in isolation and relative poverty. Myers does believe that the regime is heading for a legitimacy crisis, but it will be based on the failure of its nationalist goals, rather than on the fact that South Korea has a higher standard of living.

Most of Myers book is a detailed analysis of North Korean propaganda, especially the bizarre personality cults of "the Great Leader" Kim Il Sung and "the Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. The cult of Kim Il Sung, according to Myers, is based on the Japanese emperor cult of Hirohito before Japan's defeat in World War II. The cult has strange "matriarchal" traits. The leader is a slightly androgynous, effeminate mother figure, embodying Korean virtues such as spontaneity, childishness and purity. He is surrounded by innocent children, rides a White horse symbolizing purity and acts in a motherly way towards soldiers and citizens. Very often, his first wife Kim Jong Suk is depicted as more masculine.

The Marxist-Leninist "Juche" ideology is dismissed by Myers as mere window-dressing for foreign consumption. The domestic propaganda emphasizes the purity of the Korean "child race", opposition to miscegenation, and various nationalist myths. There is even a sacred mountain, Paektu, where both the first Korean emperor and Kim Il Sung were supposedly born (compare Fuji in Japan). Apart from the strangely maternal and decidedly non-Confucian cult of the first Kim, there is also more masculine propaganda, consisting of bellicose attacks on the United States. Myers believes that North Korean opposition to the US is at bottom nationalist rather than Communist. He points out that Korean propaganda at least implicitly portrays Americans as racially impure and explicitly as homosexual.

Myers is less clear on what kind of threat North Korea poses to the US or South Korea. At times, he writes as if the North Koreans believe in their own propaganda and are ready to cross the DMZ any moment. At other times, he more realistically proposes that the regime wants neither a full scale war nor a lasting peace, since it derives its strength from the present situation of managed high tension and extortion. (The fact that China and Russia wants North Korea as a buffer against the US sphere of influence, is surely another important factor for the DPRK's longevity.)

Not being an expert on matters Korean, I can't really judge "The Cleanest Race", but a few objections nevertheless came to me while reading it. First, why is Juche dismissed by Myers as sheer window-dressing? Juche emphasizes self-reliance, self-determination and self-defense, all three principles being perfectly compatible with nationalism. Kim Il Sung's attacks on "servilism" is part of Juche, and this includes opposition to alien culture, something pointed out by Kim himself in interviews with foreign correspondents. Juche is also somewhat similar to Maoism, surely a close ideological cousin of the DPRK. Further, Myers downplays the nationalist traits of other Communist regimes. Thus, he claims that Soviet propaganda during World War II made a distinction between Nazis and ordinary Germans. That's not the standard position, which says the opposite: Stalin adapted to Greater Russian nationalism and pan-Slavism during the war, a war whose purpose was to kill "Germans", not simply "Nazis". Stalin even used maternal images: Mother Russia! Other Communist regimes which used virulent nationalism as a tool include Bulgaria, Romania and Cambodia. All three regimes attempted to assimilate or even exterminate national minority groups. Romania's Ceausescu also used "royal" symbols derived from the Roman Empire. I don't doubt that the North Korean regime is intensely nationalist, but is that enough to call it "fascist", even apart from the fact that the term itself is somewhat slippery?

When Kim Il Sung died, somebody told me that the personality cult surrounding him was actually based on *Korean* emperor cults. Myers finds parallels to the Japanese emperor cult. Since Japan got parts of its culture from China via Korea, one wonders where the Japanese emperor cult originally comes from? Is it indigenous? Or is it actually a foreign borrowing? (Or did it fall down from the kami at Mount Fuji?)

Despite these questions, I nevertheless give the book four stars. It's interesting, easy to read and thinks outside the box. If for good or for worse, remains to be seen...

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...

In "The Cleanest Race", Myers makes a bold analyses of the North Korean world view and its internal cultural view by correlating a broad range of primary sources into a salient argument. Bravo. Whether this well supported analysis will hold up to scrutiny when North Korea opens up and can be more closely examined remains to be known.

The most difficult part for this reader is how each of the statements made by Myers is listed as absolute fact. There is no doubt, no alternative, and no possibility for discussion on each point. It is written as if he is arguing some of his points to a hostile crowd during a presentation. This method does get the author's points across to the reader, but it also presents him as arrogant or closed-minded. If Myers is right, he is a genius and deserves recognition for being one of the first to set the record straight on the North Korean worldview. If he is wrong, then he is very good at making false, but well documented arguments.

I would recommend this book to students ages 16 and up studying North Korea or various social sciences that examine various world views. The text is decently written and is not oppressively long.

2009's "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters" is author B.R. Meyers' thought-provoking survey of North Korean propaganda. In a highly readable and lavishly illustrated book, Meyers provides some useful insights into the lies North Koreans tell themselves, and the potential implications of those lies for US policy-makers.

At the core of the book is Meyers' thoughtful examination of decades of North Korean propaganda, from its founding by Kim Il Sung in 1945 right up to 2009 reports of Kim Jong Il's ill-health, concerns about a possible succession crisis, and relations with the US. Meyers' thesis is that the ideological basis of the North Korean state is paranoid rascist nationalism. He argues that outsider observers who see North Korea as the last Stalinist state or as an amalgam of Confuscism and Socialism may misunderstand Pyongyang's motives and actions. His conclusions bode poorly for current denuclearization talks with Pyongyang.

Propaganda is notoriously difficult to disect from the outside, especially when a pragmatic state plays one theme to its citizens and another to its enemies. Experienced observers of North Korea may therefore find much of interest in the book without necessarily agreeing with the author's every conclusion. "The Cleanest Race" is highly recommended to students of the Pyongyang regime as an insightful look at a closed society.

B R Myers presents the reader with a very different view of North Korea than that normally portrayed in the media. The author argues that North Korea promotes a race based world view comparable to that of Imperial Japan, rather than Marxist-Leninist ideology typical of other communist states. Additionally, North Korea promotes a maternal view of the state rather than a paternal view, where the people are believed to be a virtuous child race. Consequently, this world view holds that the Korean people need a strong leader (i.e. Kim Il Sung) to guide them. This book contains many North Korean propaganda posters and art, along with excerpts from novels, poems, songs, etc. to illustrate the author's main points. Very informative.