Talking With the 'Hermit Regime'| North Korean Media Penetration and Influence in Chinese and Russian Media: Strategic Narratives During the 2017‒2018 Nuclear Confrontation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Propaganda With Purpose: Uncovering Patterns in North Korean Nuclear Coverage, 1997-2012
What explains patterns in North Korea's own coverage of nuclear issues? The conventional wisdom assumes that North Korea focuses its attention on the United States and that changes in the administrations in the United States and South Korea influence such rhetoric, yet this remains largely untested. Content analysis using daily English news reports from the Korean Central News Agency from 1997 through 2012 provides an explicit base for how the regime attempts to frame nuclear issues for a foreign audience. References to the United States positively correlate with nuclear reference while findings regarding US and South Korean administrations conflict with the conventional wisdom. References to the Kims also negatively correlate with nuclear references with variation after Kim Jong Il's death. More broadly this analysis suggests the possible leverage of analyzing North Korea's own materials.
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 2009
Public opinion is likely to be susceptible to the way a government and the news media frame foreign countries, because unlike domestic issues, foreign news is typically beyond a person's direct experience. How does the American public respond to foreign news when its government and the news media promote competing frames and change their prominence according to the relations between the United States and that foreign country? The present study shows this frame building and frame effects by using a public opinion poll and content analysis of U.S. policy statements and media coverage. North Korea was chosen because its visibility to the American public has increased since President George W. Bush designated it as one of the countries in the "axis of evil." The results show that during a four-month period, the U.S. government and the newspaper produced three competing frames, and that the magnitude of the frames shifted as U.S.-North Korean relationships shifted. These shifts in turn made the American public choose economic sanctions over military solutions toward the country.
This thesis is a CDA analysis of a selection of western newspapers’ re-presentation of North Korea in the reports of the Yeonpyeong Island incident, a military clash between North and South Korea in 2010. The aim is to find out how North Korea is portrayed and how the portrayal is related to the hegemony of the West in Northeast Asia. A total of 12 news reports from the six most circulated American and British newspapers were selected and analyzed using transitivity, overlexicalization and presupposition. The study finds that there are two frames working within the reports, North Korea as a perpetrator frame and as a creator of imminent threat frame. Although the purpose of such negative framing of North Korea is indefinite, a constant attempt for communication is emphasized. Furthermore, I argue that the attempt may not be fruitful if western media continues to frame the country in such way.
Nordic Representations of North Korea: A Study of Newspaper Sources
Review of Korean Studies, 2018
International media regularly portray North Korea as abnormal, run by a leadership depicted in turns as evil, incompetent, all-powerful, and farcical. Such representations provide reason for publics not to question American-led preferences, dominant until 2018, for sanctions and threats over dialogue when responding to weapons development. How does a region beyond the Asia-Pacific, home to potential mediators in inter-Korean relations, view North Korea? The Nordic countries maintain functioning relationships with Pyongyang and have explored involvement in bringing North Korea and other parties into dialogue. We examine the sources used in Nordic news reports on the country in order to identify whether these relationships push media representations away from the " demonization " paradigm so common elsewhere. We find that while demonizing viewpoints are regularly expressed, linkages do contribute to more empathetic, humanizing portrayals. The Nordic example is demonstrative for thinking about ways to build support for peaceful solutions on the Korean peninsula.
2017
This paper explores how provocation narratives introduce political bias in international news. It is based on a two-step methodology. First, a network analysis of country co-mentions in American, British, French, and German news corpus shows that core countries (e.g., the United States) and their opponents (e.g., North Korea, Russia, Iran) are the most frequently cited in provocation narratives. Focusing on the case where provocation narratives are the most prominent, the Korean conflict, we then employ a quantitative content analysis to identify the relationships between the countries involved in news stories using provocation narratives, and the role played by the provocation in those news stories. Our findings show that bias is introduced in many instances where journalists, while repeatedly identifying one country, North Korea, as the provocateur, omit key information such as the reasons behind North Korea’s provocations or the identity of the provoked country. This indicates that provocation narratives adopt the core countries’ geopolitical views and portray their enemies as a global threat.
International Journal of Communication, 2020
Although North Korea is increasingly in the limelight of international news, a systematic review has yet to offer an accumulated body of knowledge regarding North Korea and its related communication scholarship. This study assesses the current state of research on media and communication in, around, and about North Korea from 2000 to June 2019. It examines a total of 85 research articles published in 57 journals. Overall, it finds an explosion in research after 2009. Findings reveal that research overwhelmingly deals with content analysis of Western media coverage, which indicates a strong influence of Cold War binaries. Findings also show that North Korea’s media environment has been moving toward more openness and better connectivity. Ultimately, this study finds a need for more comparative research to examine not only content, but also audience and producers—to include those inside North Korea, for which innovative, interdisciplinary approaches are called for.
A Propaganda Model Case Study of ABC Primetime "North Korea: Inside the Shadows"
Korea: Politics, Economy and Society (The Korea Yearbook 2013), 2013
In 2006, Diane Sawyer became the first American journalist to broadcast live from inside North Korea. Her trip ended with an hour-long special programme scrutinising life in what she considers possibly ‘the most dangerous flashpoint on Earth’ (Sawyer 2006). The threat Sawyer actually presents, however, is not that of a nuclear-armed country but of a country whose regime, despite the will of the people, refuses to be a major market for US consumer goods. Applying Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model of media operations, I conduct a discourse analysis of the textual and visual symbols Sawyer uses in illustrating and evaluating the country’s quality of life in ABC Primetime ‘North Korea: Inside the Shadows’. I conclude that Sawyer is unable to overcome her ethnocentric worldview, and therefore, North Korea is unable to emerge from the shadows.
Looking for Answers: Western media coverage of North Korea has much news, little meaning
The rumor mill has been working overtime in recent weeks due to a spate of unprecedented and often contradictory news items coming out of Pyongyang—items which, individually, wouldn’t raise more than a few eyebrows, mostly just among longtime Korea watchers, but which in the aggregate would seem to suggest that potentially significant changes are afoot in the Hermit Kingdom. While the mainstream media is geared toward sensationalistic reporting anything regarding President Kim Jong Un—even, as in recent reports, his conspicuous absence from the public eye—other events involving senior officeholders in Pyongyang have virtually slipped unnoticed under the media’s radar, making it worth taking a step back to analyze just what, if anything, these various events signal.
The abyss gazes back: how North Korean propaganda interprets sanctions, threats and diplomacy
The Pacific Review, 2020
This article examines the ways in which the North Korean regime filters and reinterprets various 'messages' from the outside world for its domestic audience through the lens of state-produced literature. In broad strokes, I identify three main types of foreign interactions purported to send a 'message' to North Korea economic sanctions, summit diplomacy and military exercises/fleet movements and examine how these are treated in North Korean fiction produced by the Korean Writer's Union, an important arm of the Party's Propaganda and Agitation Department. Each of the three interaction types represents a formal effort by an outside governmenttypically the United States or its alliesto send a message to the regime or its people and thereby shape their behavior and/or perception of the outside world. By examining how these 'messages' are portrayed in North Korean fiction, we can gain insight into how the regime shapes internal narratives about foreign affairs, as well as what sort of alternative narratives it is most anxious to intercept or disrupt.
The Bias of Provocation Narratives in International News
The International Journal of Press/Politics, 2017
This paper explores how provocation narratives introduce political bias in international news. It is based on a two-step methodology. First, a network analysis of country co-mentions in American, British, French, and German news corpus shows that core countries (e.g., the United States) and their opponents (e.g., North Korea, Russia, Iran) are the most frequently cited in provocation narratives. Focusing on the case where provocation narratives are the most prominent, the Korean conflict, we then employ a quantitative content analysis to identify the relationships between the countries involved in news stories using provocation narratives, and the role played by the provocation in those news stories. Our findings show that bias is introduced in many instances where journalists, while repeatedly identifying one country, North Korea, as the provocateur, omit key information such as the reasons behind North Korea’s provocations or the identity of the provoked country. This indicates th...