Brian Reynolds Myers

Myers’ opinion columns for the Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal generally focus on North Korea, which he says is not a Marxist-Leninist or a Stalinist state, but a "national-socialist country." He has also commented in The New York Times on the common view of the ROKS Cheonan sinking in South Korea with regard to its perception of North Korea. He stated that there was a lack of outrage over the incident among South Koreans due to the racialized nature of Korean nationalism; in other words, there was no major uproar over the incident in South Korea because of the concept of racial solidarity with the North Koreans that many South Koreans feel, which Myers said overruled patriotism towards South Korea in many cases. Myers stated that inter-Korean racial solidarity manifests itself by South Koreans supporting the North Korean soccer team at the FIFA World Cup and such. He contrasted the racialized nature of South Korean nationalism with the civic nature of U.S. nationalism, stating that South Korea's antipathy over attacks by North Korea was potentially dangerous to the national security of the South Korean state:

A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose (2002) was developed from his critical review essay of the same name published in the Atlantic in 2001.

Myers’ book The Cleanest Race has been challenged by several academic critics. Charles K. Armstrong of Columbia University suggested that the book "gives an intellectual gloss to attitudes many in the West already have about the DPRK". Felix Abt, a Swiss business affairs specialist who lived in North Korea for seven years, describes Myers' claims in The Cleanest Race as "flawed" and "shaky". Abt wrote that it was "rather absurd" to describe Juche as "window-dressing" for foreigners.

How can Myers say that he [Han Sǒrya] is not a socialist realist? How can Myers say that Han's thought is not compatible with communist ideology? I can understand Myers’s views on orthodox socialist realism, yet I see socialist realism abundantly present in North Korean literature: North Korean writers still advocate socialist realism. Myers simply does not interpret socialist realism as they do.

Myers furthers his argument about the status of Juche as a non-ideology in his book North Korea's Juche Myth (2015). According to his own account, promoting him to write the book was the realization he was making "not the slightest bit of headway" with The Cleanest Race in challenging the conventional wisdom about Juche in the academia. North Korea's Juche Myth develops a three-pronged categorization of North Korean propaganda. Some works are in the "inner track", meant for North Korean eyes only. Others are in the "outer track", meant primarily for North Korean consumption but mindful of the fact that foreigners can access them too. "Export track" propaganda specifically targets foreigners.

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (2010) is a discussion of North Korean propaganda, contending that North Korea under Kim Jong-il was guided by a "paranoid, race-based nationalism with roots in Japanese fascism." Myers asserts that the North Korean political system is not based on communism or Stalinism, and he contends that the official Juche idea is a sham ideology for foreign consumption and intended to establish Kim Il-sung's credentials as a thinker alongside Mao Zedong. Myers also claims that post-Cold War attempts to understand North Korea as a Confucian patriarchy, based on the filial piety of Kim Jong-il and the dynastic transfer of power from his father, are misguided and that the North Korean leadership is maternalist rather than paternalist.

Myers is married to a South Korean woman, Myung-hee Myers. He lives and teaches in South Korea, where he moved to in September 2001. During the late 1990s, he lived in Valencia County, New Mexico. Politically, Myers is a supporter of the Green Party of the United States and animal rights. Myers can speak Korean, Mandarin, and German. He is a vegan.

Myers' Han Sŏrya and the North Korean literature: The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK (1994) was adapted from his 1992 dissertation at the University of Tübingen and published as the sixty-ninth volume of the Cornell East Asia Series.

Myers was born in New Jersey, near Fort Dix. His mother is British, and his late father was a U.S. Army officer who served in South Korea as a military chaplain, often helping out local orphans. Myers spent his childhood in Bermuda and his high school youth in apartheid-era South Africa, and received graduate education in West Berlin during the early 1980s, occasionally visiting East Germany. He earned an MA degree in Soviet studies at Ruhr University (1989) and a PhD degree in Korean studies with a focus on North Korean literature at the University of Tübingen (1992). Myers subsequently taught German in Japan and worked for a Mercedes-Benz liaison office in Beijing during the mid-1990s.

Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963), usually cited as B. R. Myers, is an American professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, best known for his writings on North Korean propaganda. He is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Myers is the author of Han Sǒrya and North Korean Literature (Cornell, 1994), A Reader's Manifesto (Melville House, 2002), The Cleanest Race (Melville House, 2010), and North Korea's Juche Myth (Sthele Press, 2015).