The Korean people have always been more outward-looking than their insecure leaders, and for centuries this was especially true of those in the north… - Brian Reynolds Myers

[A]t the risk of sounding like a broken record: this is a far-right, militarist state. Such states tend to experience uprisings only when they have failed by militarist or nationalist standards, as the Argentinian junta did in 1982.

Let me highlight the fact, then, that a mistrust of outsiders – as manifested by and in states for thousands of years – is very different from an ideology asserting that one uniquely pure race is morally superior to all others. Such thinking was by no means the norm even in European fascism. It runs directly counter to Marx.

Ideology, legitimacy, authority: Such topics used to interest academics no end. The mania for quantifying the social sciences and the attendant decline in foreign-language acquisition have changed things. I remember Sovietologists lamenting this trend when I was at school in the 1980s. It’s gone much, much further since. What cannot be researched with the proper statistical-numerical methodology is thought beneath serious analysis. On the rare occasions when a non-quantifier takes the microphone at a conference, the Gradgrinds lean back with an indulgent smile: Time for some light relief.