The Cleanest Race

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves—and Why It Matters

Book cover
Author	B.R. Myers
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	North Korean history and propaganda
Publisher	Melville House Publishing
Publication date	2010
Media type	Print
Pages	169
ISBN

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters is a 2010 book by Brian Reynolds Myers. Based on a study of the propaganda produced in North Korea for internal consumption, Myers argues that the guiding ideology of North Korea is a race-based nationalism derived from Japanese fascism, rather than any form of Communism. The book is based on author's study of the material in the Information Center on North Korea.

Brian Reynolds Myers was born in the United States and was educated on the graduate level in Germany. He is an editor of The Atlantic magazine and the author of A Reader's Manifesto, as well as of Han Sorya and North Korea Literature (1994), which was the only book in English about North Korean literature until Tatiana Gabroussenko's literary history Soldiers on the Cultural Front (2010). Myers has studied North Korea for twenty years and is fluent in Korean. He holds an assistant professorship in international studies at Dongseo University in South Korea.

For the book, Myers studied North Korean mass culture with reference to domestically published novels, films, and serials available at the Ministry of Unification in Seoul. Myers claims his analysis differs from that of conventional North Korea watchers, because he focuses on internal Korean-language propaganda, rather than on Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) external broadcasts and English-language reports from South Korea.