BOOK REVIEW

The Cleanest Race - B.R. Myers

Meticulously researched, puts an incisive analysis to the DPRK’s propaganda system

            Though it’s been three years since my visit to North Korea, my interest in the nation has not waned with time. The development of the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear program has been a recurring theme in international news coverage, stemming from reports that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, launched a satellite and conducted its most powerful nuclear test to date – all in the last ten months. However, I’ve come to recognize that much of mainstream media’s reportage on this isolated state is rather obtuse and by that vein shallow. In discovering this book and learning of Myers’ reputation – not only does he have a Ph.D. in North Korean studies but he is fluent in Korean, the better to study the DPRK’s original works – I knew it was an academic work of this type that was necessary to deepen my understanding of the nation.

            Drawing on extensive research from the regime’s propaganda, Myers lays out his premise that the North Koreans’ worldview is very much misunderstood. This initially caused me to wonder if the book would adopt an apologist tone and defend the North’s policies, widely accepted as amongst the most abject and reprehensible governments in modern history. Yet this is simply Myers’ overture into explaining that, contrary to Western perceptions, North Korea is neither a model of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy. The reality is far more nuanced: he posits the DPRK rests on the far-right of the political spectrum as a nationalist autocracy, whose tight reign over its people hinges on the idea that Koreans are the purest race of any. This, he insists, is an ideology the regime itself believes to be a sacrosanct outlook. Indeed, it is true that the regime’s self-isolation has resulted in the world’s most homogeneous populace and its leaders have worked hard to propagate that the Korean people’s inherent virtuousness has made them vulnerable and victims of past colonization. 

          This backdrop permits for the role of a hermaphroditic leader like Kim Il Sung, who has the strength to protect his family as a father would but is actually more often depicted as a caring mother, nurturing and caring for his metaphorical children. Not only is this positioning incongruent with any Confucian framework, but is also glaringly mendacious given what we know about the regime’s proclivity to subject its own citizens to unjust punishment and torture. Though Kim Jong Il’s construed image was intentionally more militaristic, he too is projected as an embodiment of Korean virtues, despite having arguably a worse human rights record. It was on this subject I would have liked Myers to devote more scrutiny, such as to how the regime justifies its infamous prison camps, with kidnappings in the middle of the night and the absence of a coherent judicial system. (Though he relates conversations with refugees on life in the DPRK, the topic of mistreatment is a notable omission.) He does, however, enlighten readers on how the regime frames up other potentially contentious issues, such as the famine of the mid-90’s or the aid it receives from the U.S. state.

                Myers’ expertise on North Korea is without question and his bibliography is a testament to his research, spanning ten full pages and consisting mostly of original texts, books or films from the DPRK itself. It’s a shame this work was published prior to Kim Jong Un’s ascendancy to power, but for anyone looking to comprehend how a Potemkin system like North Korea’s works to keep a dictatorship cult alive, start here. 

-NP, October 2016