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North Koreans can frequent black markets and still consider themselves good citizens, as was impossible in the communist East Bloc. So the situation … - Brian Reynolds Myers
" "North Koreans can frequent black markets and still consider themselves good citizens, as was impossible in the communist East Bloc. So the situation now is more like Japan or Germany in 1944, say, than like East Germany in the 1980s. Widespread government corruption? Check. An entire population of economic criminals? Check. Constant griping about the state, the party, even some joking about the leader? Check. Even good Nazis had their Hitler jokes. A general readiness to fight for the state? Well, there’s certainly more readiness in the North than in the South.
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About Brian Reynolds Myers
Brian Reynolds "B. R." Myers (born 1963) is an American journalist and associate professor of international studies at at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, best known for his writings on North Korea.
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B. R. Myers
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Additional quotes by Brian Reynolds Myers
Foreigners assume that because of the war, the two sides must dislike each other more than West and East Germans did. The opposite is the case. Some of my students say, “The North would never attack us, we’re the same people,” as if the war never happened. And North Korea would now be just as committed to unification if it hadn’t.
The US-ROK alliance’s position on North Korea has been inexorably softening, with only minor and temporary reversals, for over half a century now, while North Korea, arming steadily, has always held fast to its commitment to “final victory,” to unification under its own flag. One need only take a few steps back from the daily news to see where this is headed.
"What belongs together, is growing together again," Willy Brandt said in 1989. The formulation implies a more balanced and grass-rootsy process than actually ensued in Germany — or is likely to take place here. Koreans belong together and will someday grow back together. But if the South doesn’t take the upper hand in training and guiding that growth, the North will.
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