Brian Reynolds Myers on Friendship

"trong racial pride always entails intense awareness of an inferior other. For the North Koreans, foreigners are inferior — even the friendly ones."

"The North wants unification under its own flag, while South Korean progressives want the two states to coalesce over decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation."

"What you have here in South Korea really is extreme nationalists."

"Everybody really is the "other" for North Koreans."

"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."

"o Blue House can win Pyongyang’s trust without distancing itself from the US ally to a significant degree. At the very least it must present itself as neutral in the nuclear stand-off, but even that probably isn't enough. As Chamfort said, "Anyone placed at exactly the same distance between yourself and your enemy will always appear closer to your enemy." The South Koreans can play go-between only if they restrict themselves to mediating with Washington on the North's behalf."

"Americans expect Seoul to play good cop to their bad cop. They assume the commonality of language, ethnicity and culture will help the South build trust with the North, so it can put the alliance’s demands over more persuasively. They also reckon the North Koreans will find it easier to yield to soft-spoken fellow Koreans than to the foreigners with whom they have been exchanging threats and insults for decades. But to play such a role the South must overcome an exceptionally high barrier of mistrust. It gets no brownie points for Koreanness alone. On the contrary; from the North’s standpoint it’s precisely that co-ethnicity which makes the puppet state’s long collusion with the Yankees so heinous."

"Korea's northern border remains easy to cross, and North Koreans are now well aware of the prosperity enjoyed south of the demilitarized zone, Kim Jong-il continues to rule over a stable and supportive population. Kim enjoys mass support due to his perceived success in strengthening the race and humiliating its enemies. Thanks in part to decades of skillful propaganda, North Koreans generally equate the race with their state, so that ethno-nationalism and state-loyalty are mutually enforcing. In this respect North Korea enjoys an important advantage over its rival, for in the Republic of Korea ethno-nationalism militates against support for a state that is perceived as having betrayed the race. South Koreans' "good race, bad state" attitude is reflected in widespread sympathy for the people of the north and in ambivalent feelings toward the United States and Japan, which are regarded as friends of the republic but enemies of the race."