<html><head><title>Re: [KS] Re-revised posting "Revoking a Recommendation"</title>
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<span style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;">Dear Don and all,<br>
I am friends with Balasz, Brian and Charles, I respect their work, and I have learned a lot from each of them. I am also not a historian despite my little excursion into East German archives (SED and Bauhaus) 22 years ago when I worked on the Hamhùng project 1954-1962. For these reasons, personal and professional, I cowardly refrain from commenting on the present case.<br>
But I really cannot remain silent when I read the sentence "<span style=" font-size: 11pt;">I wouldn’t trust Brian Myers to evaluate someone else’s scholarship<span style=" font-size: 12pt;">". <br>
I have known Brian since 1994, and followed his work ever since. He can be harsh in his judgement and interpretation; you may call this a lack of social competence, self-destructive honesty or devotion to academic purity. But I never had the impression that he is not painstakingly correct, if not obsessed, when it comes to facts and details. To me, Brian is one of the very few scholars I know whom I would call truly exceptional, and this is not just for his impressive command of various languages. I admit that meeting such people is painful at times because it shows me how average my own scholarship is, although I might be the better diplomat. But while I know that Brian can be very passionate (some will call it rude), I would never dare not paying attention to an academic argument he makes or to discard it as negligible. <br>
I think it's ok to challenge his points, one by one; it is definitely not ok to grossly question his personal integrity.<br>
Best regards,<br>
Rudiger<br>
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PS: Brian has for many years been particularly upset about an alleged lack of language proficiency. I don't think he's always correct with such assertions, and I think he sometimes overstates that issue, but in principle I do share his concern. Among the lastest disturbing examples was Western reporting on the 7th Party Congress, which was, at least that's how it seemed to me, almost entirely based on the 3-page English summary of a 30-page speech published simultaneously in Korean. See </span></span></span><a style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;" href="http://apjjf.org/2016/14/Frank.html">http://apjjf.org/2016/14/Frank.html</a> <br>
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<span style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;">*****<br>
<span style=" font-size: 9pt; color: #339966;">New Book: Nordkorea: Innenansichten eines totalen Staates,432 pp.<br>
see </span></span><a style=" color: #339966; font-family:'arial'; font-size: 9pt;" href="http://www.amazon.de/Nordkorea-Innenansichten-eines-totalen-Staates/dp/3421046417">http://www.amazon.de/Nordkorea-Innenansichten-eines-totalen-Staates/dp/3421046417</a><br>
<span style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;">*****<br>
<span style=" font-size: 8pt; color: #c0c0c0;"><i>-- <br>
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Rudiger Frank<br>
Head of Department<br>
Professor of East Asian Economy and Society<br>
University of Vienna<br>
Department of East Asian Studies<br>
Spitalgasse 2 Hof 2.3<br>
1090 Vienna<br>
- Austria -<br>
<br>
phone: +43-1-4277 43871<br>
fax: +43-1-4277 43849<br>
web: </i></span></span><a style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 7pt;" href="http://wirtschaft.ostasien.univie.ac.at">http://wirtschaft.ostasien.univie.ac.at</a><br>
<span style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 7pt; color: #c0c0c0;"><i>email: </i></span><a style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 7pt;" href="mailto:ruediger.frank@univie.ac.at">ruediger.frank@univie.ac.at</a><br>
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<span style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;">on Donnerstag, 15. September 2016 at 17:25 you wrote:<br>
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<td><span style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 11pt;">I wouldn’t trust Brian Myers to evaluate someone else’s scholarship. He actually posted on his blog a while back a recommendation to readers to trust a totally concocted “account” of the May 18, 1980, massacre in Kwangju that claimed that the whole incident was caused by North Korean agents who had infiltrated Kwangju before May 18: Daniel Kim (Kim Taeryŏng) Y<i>ŏksarosŏ ŭi 5.18: 5.18 chaep’an pŏmniŭi mosun </i>[Looking at May 18 in historical perspective: Legal contradictions in the trials related to the May 18 incident- (Seoul: Pibong Books, 2013) Myers went on to assert on his blog that "there is evidence or testimony t<span style=" color: #232323;">o back up the claim of DPRK involvement.”<span style=" color: #000000;"> He has now removed that post from his blog, so maybe he realized how ridiculous his assertion was. (The original posting was at </span></span></span><a style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 11pt;" href="http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2016/06/14/recommendation-may-18th-as-history-2013/">http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2016/06/14/recommendation-may-18th-as-history-2013/</a><br>
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<span style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 11pt;">Don Baker<br>
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<span style=" font-size: 12pt;">Don Baker <br>
Professor<br>
Department of Asian Studies <br>
University of British Columbia <br>
Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2 <br>
don.baker@ubc.ca<br>
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<hr style="height: 2px; color : #000000; background-color : #000000; border-width : 0px;">From: jiyulkim@gmail.com<br>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:09:00 -0400<br>
To: koreanstudies@koreanstudies.com<br>
Subject: [KS] Re-revised posting "Revoking a Recommendation"<br>
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<span style=" font-size: 8pt;">[NOTE TO ADMINISTRATOR: please discard two earlier versions and review this for posting]<br>
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I came across this recent posting by B. R. Myers revoking his recommendation for Charles Armstrong's <i>Tyranny of the Weak</i> (2013)<i>.</i> Myers' revocation is, for me, unprecedented.<br>
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Myers compares Armstrong's <i>Tyranny </i>with Balazs Szalontai's <i>Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era</i> (2005)<i>. </i>He gives detailed examples why he can't support the book. If there is any truth to what Myers says then it is all very disturbing since Armstrong's books are widely admired and used.<br>
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I wonder what others think. Myers' post can be found at <br>
</span></span></span><a style=" font-family:'arial'; font-size: 12pt;" href="http://sthelepress.com/">http://sthelepress.com/</a><br>
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<span style=" font-family:'Arial'; font-size: 12pt;">Jiyul Kim<br>
Oberlin College<br>
Oberlin, Ohio</td>
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