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
Continued page 28
AAsian Currents August 2013 28
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
Continued page 29Asian Currents August 2013 29
Demonising North Korea
From page 28
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.