Brian Myers and My Demons

Dr. Brian Myers – on Let’s Talk Busan (with Kenneth May) – always brings out a certain demon in my spirit. On one hand, I was an analyst and linguist for the U.S. Army. I listened to North Koreans (very boring job). I worked with some of the most annoying South Koreans on the planet. It seems like a niche market, right? I mean how many hundreds get to study Korean and listen to North Koreans. On the other hand, I’ve never visited the DPRK, and I really don’t see myself doing so in my lifetime. Gulags, poverty…what’s interesting in any of that. I can’t even amass the sort of evidence a dilettante would need to become an expert. And, need I remind you in this venue, I’m mercifully no longer an analyst. I live in the better Korea now, and I married one of the better sort of Koreans. But, I’m no longer a koreaphile.

What has happened is, that I’ve become interested in the aspects of Korean history I can share with other civilians – that’s you reading this now – and how Korea relates to the big questions. Is there a social science? Are humans genocidal sadists? Is there a more advanced species in humanity’s future? Can I make my wife high priestess of a new religion based on the consumption of tea (I’m joking!)? Can I erase every stupid, immoral, and wasteful word humanity ever thought and uttered and distill reason into the shortest terms possible, without surpassing every evil the Nazis or Inquisition ever committed?

So, Myers seems insufficiently skeptical to me. It’s not just that I think culture as an academic parlor game is a halfway house between scoundrels and liars. I question relying upon a quicksand of newspaper articles, half-baked propaganda, sociology (no further derision required), and traitors’ confessions. O might have left the puzzle palace, but that’s where the knowing is done. I didn’t leave because it was fruitless, but rather because I very nearly ended up in my own interior rubber room where I couldn’t talk to anyone not sporting a clearance. I gained the opportunity to tackle the big questions, not stand on quicksand.

I’m curious about many places, sports, even math. My pitiful security clearance once made me feel omniscient. But, for my sanity and my life, I no longer need to sacrifice everything to sate my appetites. The subject of North Korea will always make me remember this.

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Filed under: Korea, Podcasts, Radio Tagged: brian myers, busan, jeff lebow, kenneth may, let's talk busam, pusan