North Korea and the Cleanest Race

I just added a new book to my reading list: The Cleanest Race by B.R. Myers. Mr. Myers is a professor at Dongseo University and an occasional journalist. His book is an attempt to provide an explanation to Westerners of the seemingly irrational behavior of North Korean leaders.

We make a mistake, according to Prof. Myers, when we try and interpret the actions of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Il Jong through a Western looking glass. It is a mistake to call the North Korean leader and his cadre, Communists, Stalinists, or any other "ist," he says. Neither, says the author is North Korea's leaders motivated by the concept of self-reliance that Western intelligence has told us for so long has been the driving motivator for keeping an entire population subjugated to the whims of the Dear Leader.

What keeps the country together and under the boot of a cruel dictator is a moral superiority based on race. Simply put, it is a nationalist ideal not dissimilar from that of the Japanese prior to 1945 or the Nazi Aryan race theory.

Viewed through this prism, the actions of the North seem to make a little more, but not a lot more, sense. At least it explains the official government view of Americans as animals, no better than wolves or hyenas. It is the reason that the government explains that humanitarian aid from the U.S. and other Western powers is played off as "tribute" from weaker nations to a stronger one. Even Bill Clinton's mission last year to Pyongyang to rescue to imprisoned journalists is tossed off as the pilgrimage of a vassal to a more powerful leader to atone and beg forgiveness for his sins.

All of which is quaintly bizarre in the 21st century. Except when you mix in the threat of nukes. Then bizarre turns to scary. Under their worldview, the North Koreans have no reason or motivation to give up their nuclear program, nor any desire to make peace with the U.S. The last 15 years have been a kabuki dance with three U.S. presidents to manage passions, not to overcome them. Thus, says Prof. Myers, the answer to the question of whether a dirt poor, third-world country would go to war with their neighbors to the south and their Western ally, the U.S., is a resounding yes. And the worse that domestic politics become in the North, and the more that deprivation feeds political unrest, the more likely it would seem to be.

This is scary stuff. In his 2002 State of the Union address George Bush outlined an "axis of evil" consisting of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq has been pretty much pacified and Iran is still a big question mark in the Middle East. But Prof. Myers' book takes some of the mystery out of North Korea. The picture of the North is a little clearer, but no less scary.

Not exactly bedtime reading.

Just thought you might like to know.