The demonisation of North Korea

http://asaa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/asian-currents-13-08.pdf

Negative and often sensationalist

views of North Korea dominate

Australian media.

By Bronwen Dalton, Markus Bell and

Kyungja Jung

A headline in The Australian

states: ‘Only the brave and

very lucky are able to escape

the clutches of the evil regime’. If,

therefore, a North Korean is lucky

enough to escape her Orwellian

nightmare of gulags and starvation

and access Australian media, she

might struggle to adjust to the

objective, balanced and critical

reporting about North Korea that

appears in a free press. Or would

she?

Much has been written about how

the North Korea government controls

the supply of information and uses

the media to reinforce the exercise of

its own power. Yet less attention has

been paid to how North Korea has

been socially constructed in the

public sphere through the mass

media in the West.

The Western media has been central

to how the international community

frames discourse around North

Korea. By producing and reproducing

particular discourses, the media can

tacitly endorse certain perspectives

while silencing others. It is,

therefore, important to be aware of

the media’s role in ‘constructing’

North Korea as a way of not only

appreciating the wider discourse but

to understand how this discourse

influences key policy makers and

wider public opinion.

An analysis of media coverage

appearing in three major Australian

media outlets, The Australian, The

Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and

transcripts of the Australian

Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) over

the three-year period, from

1 January 2010 to 31 December

2012, shows that while there are

some differences in subject matter

and style overall, Australian media

articles are dominated by a negative

and often sensationalist view of

North Korea.

An analysis also reveals a number of

dominant metaphors: North Korea as

a military threat (conflict metaphor);

North Korea as unpredictable,

irrational and ruthless

(psychopathology metaphor); North

Korea as isolated and secretive

(pariah metaphor); North Korea as

cruel dystopia (Orwellian metaphor);

North Korea as impoverished

(basket-case metaphor).

Such metaphors play an influential

role in shaping public perceptions. In

their largely uncritical reproduction of

metaphors that linguistically frame

North Korea, the Australian media

reinforces a negative, often

adversarial orientation towards North

Korea. By using language that

reflects conflict, games to be won

and lost, or a mess to be cleaned up,

an irrational leadership and a

brainwashed people, the media

constructs a belief that North Korea

is something to be feared, something

that requires a strategy to

overpower, or something better

swept away. These metaphors

contribute to constructing facts about

North Korea’s interests and

motivations and framing North Korea

within a singular, immutable focus.

North Korea rarely a country; its

rulers never a government

North Korea was rarely referred to as

a country or its rulers as a

government. (By contrast the most

common descriptor of South Korea

was country; for example South

Korea, ‘the most wired country in the

world’). The most common

descriptors for North Korea were

Hermit Kingdom, North Korean state,

North Korean regime and North

Korea dynasty. The analysis found

only five references to North Korea’s

official name, the Democratic

People’s Republic of Korea. Some of

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Demonising North Korea

From page 27

the more common descriptors of

country and/or the government

(ordered by frequency) were:

State: impoverished rogue state;

secretive state; the world's most

isolated and Orwellian state; the

whole rotten carcass of the North

Korean state; a nuclear weapons

state; instability within the rogue

state; Stalinist state/the last Stalinist

state; a failed state with nuclear

weapons/ nuclear weapons state; the

state as a religious cult; the world's

most closed state; police state; failed

state.

Regime: North Korean regime;

totalitarian regime; evil regime;

brutality of the Pyongyang regime;

belligerent regime; Asia's worst

regime; North Korea's regime may

be crazy, but it's not insane;

communist regime; isolated regime;

hermit regime; regime is now inward

looking; regime change cruel and

despotic regime in Pyongyang.

Metaphors

Psychopathology metaphor: A

common theme in these reports is

that North Korea suffers from a

pathological narcissistic disorder,

with portrayals of North Korea as

seeking attention to exploit the

threat of nuclear retaliation to

extricate more aid. For example,

‘extorts aid and demands attention

by threats of violence’ (SMH 27

March 2012); ‘So Kim thinks of his

military capability as an attentiongetting

device and he has a history

of using provocation as a tool of

negotiation’ (SMH 25 May 2010).

The regime was also described as

highly unpredictable. For example,

‘the only predictable thing in North

Korea is how unpredictable it is’

(ABC, 23 November 2010) and

‘Usually cited as northeast Asia's

biggest wildcard and most

unpredictable security threat …’ (The

Australian, 18 August 2011). Evil,

brutal, ruthless and irrational were

also commonly used terms.

Conflict metaphor: By far the most

common conflict metaphor used

across the three news outlets was

‘nuclear’, which appeared more than

any other conflict metaphor (1228

times) and almost as many times as

all others combined. ‘War’ and ‘fight’

together were found 415 times.

The use of verbs such as attack,

strike, provoke, escalate and

confront likens North Korea to a

dangerous predator, ready to pounce

at any moment. While the North

Korean government has consistently

referred to satellites being launched

as part of its space program, the

Australian media consistently

referred to the launching of rockets

and ballistic missiles (the term rocket

launch appeared 481 time, ballistic

missile appeared 117 times while

satellite appeared 98 times).When

the term satellite did appear, it was

in the context that North Korea

claimed it was a satellite.

Similarly, while the extent of North

Korea’s nuclear capability is not

categorically known, its nuclear

capacity is consistently assumed,

with references to a possible ‘nuclear

holocaust’ (ABC 3 January 2011).

Some reports made the highly

unlikely claim that a North Korean

nuclear warhead carrying a rocket

could reach Australia; for example

‘North Korea is developing an

intercontinental ballistic missile that

might be able to deliver a nuclear

warhead to Australia’ (The Australian

22 December 2012).

Pariah metaphor: Numerous

references to the pariah metaphor

were found. The words ‘secret’ or

‘secretive’ were the most common,

appearing 136 times, followed by

‘isolated’ (73). Other common words

included ‘hermit’, ‘dark’ and ‘closed’.

The following example is typical of

the pariah metaphor: ‘Occasionally

the veil is pulled back from the

secretive state of North Korea and

we get a glimpse of what life is like

there’ (ABC 7 October 2011). At the

crux of the pariah/secretive

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Demonising North Korea

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metaphor is media interest in North

Korea’s secret nuclear program (a

secret which everyone seems to

know about).

Economic basket-case metaphor: The

sample also contained a number of

root metaphors relating to ‘North

Korea as a basket case’. Food—or

lack of—was most commonly

discussed, appearing 185 times, as

well as starving, collapse, survival,

poverty and famine. Overall, the

frame portrays North Korea as

destitute, populated by starving

people eking out an existence in

desperate privation.

Orwellian metaphor: A common

theme was that North Korea is some

kind of dystopia. The most commonly

found term was dictator, which

appeared 120 times, followed by cult

(101) and propaganda (63).

Examples include references to a

‘country that has been imprisoned in

an Orwellian nightmare for nearly

seven decades’ (SMH 14 July 2012),

and ‘Orwellian surveillance’ (SMH 20

December 2011).

Humour

Australian news media coverage of

North Korea often seeks to combine

humour and personal attack,

focussing on the eccentric leadership

and ‘weird’ qualities of leaders Kim

Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. Common

themes that some in the media

justify as providing colour to a story

on North Korea include Kim Jong-Il

sinking 11 holes-in-one in his first

round of golf, and the corpulence of

the Kims. Descriptions of Kim Jongun

include: chubby-faced son, and

the baby-faced basketball and

computer game fan. In the largely

uncritical reproduction of metaphors

that linguistically frame North Korea,

the Australian media reinforces a

negative, often adversarial

orientation towards the country. The

language applied to North Korea’s

leadership is also often

dehumanising, taking the form of

psychopathology imagery that

equates and reduces the leadership’s

actions to abnormal, irrational

human behaviours. This orientation,

like all frames, also highlights certain

ways of dealing with North Korea,

while obscuring our ability to see

more creative, positive conflict

management possibilities. No wonder

audiences are cynical when conflict

experts suggest they use interestbased,

integrative conflict

management.

The Australian media would be

substantially enlivened by more

stories illustrating actual individual

and community life in order to give a

human face to North Korea and offer

the Australian public a less singular,

monotonous depiction of a country

so often written about with such a

limited lexicon. This would alter the

way we view North Korea and

ameliorate the tendency to see it as

an adversarial, irrational, rogue state

of brain-washed citizens devoted to

the cult of the Kims.

Without a timely change to the North

Korean frame, resourced and

evidence-based intervention is more

likely to fail due to donor

disengagement. We also run the risk

of dehumanising the North Korean

people and, in the event of conflict,

human shields could easily be recast

as collateral damage. In such a

scenario, the humanitarian

imperatives are more easily cast

aside in favour of the option to send

in the drones.

Dr Bronwen Dalton is the Director of the

Centre for Community Organisations and

Management at the University of

Technology (UTS), Sydney.

Kyungja Jung is a senior lecturer in Social

Inquiry at UTS.

Markus Bell is a PhD candidate in the

anthropology department of the

Australian National University and is

researching the emergence of a

transnational North Korean diaspora.