Andrei Lankov Quotations

There are very few cases of a young, educated, middle-class North Korean defector who would get a good South Korean education and then make what would seem as a 'normal' career in the South.

The 2002 reforms were just a recognition of changes that had happened already. It's not reform in any meaningful sense, there was just a disintegration of the state.

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. (...) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library.

Most people in Seoul don't care about the North's belligerent statements: The farther one is from the Korean Peninsula, the more one will find people worried about the recent developments here. Scary impressions are important to North Korea because for the last two decades its policy has been, above all, a brilliant exercise in diplomatic blackmail. And blackmail usually works better when the practitioners are seen as irrational and unpredictable.

To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.

There are no visible signs of economic reform, There's a big difference.

They (the U.S.) could do nothing but wait until the regime collapses, or they could attack, which could be a very bloody war.

For decades, this country was second only to Albania, or even second to none, for keeping out all information about foreign countries. But the old state supervision, where the police would do random checks looking for things like radios, collapsed over the last decade. It was too expensive to run.