EPIK Journals Online

Comparative Community Building: The Two Koreas (Vol. 1 Iss. 04)

Negative Image Construction of North Korea: Nuclear Orientalism in the U.S Newspapers

Author: Binnarae Oh, University College London

Released Date: August 2010

Introduction:

In reply to a South Korean reporter’s question of why Pyongyang was spending its scarce resources on ballistic missiles, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il answered the following:

The missiles cannot reach the U.S. and if I launch them, the U.S. would fire back thousands of missiles and we would not survive. I know that very well. But I have to let them know I have missiles. I am making them because only then will the U.S. talk to me (French 2004, 207).

Unlike the media portrayals of Kim illustrating him as a threat to world peace, in the above interview, we can observe that his attempt to acquire nuclear weapons merely aims to attack another country. Rather his intention for the weapons lies in the diplomatic ground desiring to gain a voice in the international arena.

When the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, announced its intent to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on January 10th, 2003, alarmism about the danger of proliferation has become most salient over North Korea. The surrounding discourse of the former U.S. President George W. Bush Jr.’s Axis of Evil and imminent threat to world security has had a noticeable effect upon perceptions of the reclusive and closed country, and numerous hostile and offensive interpretations of its purpose for acquiring nuclear weapons have been prominent. Despite arguments by scholars providing defensive position of the nuclear weapons, the U.S. media coverage over the North Korean nuclear issue has been framing the nation as a threat to world peace. While on one hand, world peace is believed to be preserved by the deterrence role played by the existence of current nuclear weapons by nations such as the United States (U.S.); on the other hand, world peace is threatened by the conflicts between nuclear and non-nuclear countries. Such existing paradox in today’s international security discourse raises major conflict between the nuclear haves and have-nots.

The current international nuclear discourse presents bipolar images between “us”, in which the U.S. is portrayed as safe with weapons, and the “other” which infers problematic non-Western country nuclear predicament. This divide in rhetoric reveals the presence of what Hugh Gusterson (1999) calls Nuclear Orientalism. Based on Said’s (1978) theory of Orientalism, which argues that the West thinks of its position superior over the Orient (Said 1978, 78), Gusterson asserts that “there is a common perception in the West that nuclear weapons are most dangerous when they are in the hands of Third World leaders” (Gusterson 1999, 111). This West-centered prejudice leads to bias when we look at Third World countries attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. Here I claim that the motive behind the U.S. opposition against the North’s nuclear acquisition originates from the nuclear Orientalism.

While the extent of the threat that such a small country, in terms of population and geography, with serious destitution and economic desperation, can pose to the world is in doubt, the threat is mainly highlighted in the U.S. media. Paradoxically, the surrounding discourse is a result of social construction by post-Cold War American administrations. Looking through modern history, the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons is the U.S. And now the U.S. media attempts to secure the world from the threats and hostility raised by feeble North. The fundamental purpose behind the image construction is the “acts to preserve the profound military supremacy of the U.S. in particular and the West in general” (Cooper 2006, 372). This construction of the “Orient” image appears throughout media news reports.

The power of manipulative media representations has dominated our views in international relations. Park (2003) claims that “the window does not show the world as it is… People only see the world within the frame of the window” and goes on to say that “mass media’s consistent portrayal of certain topics … develop images of foreign countries” (Park 2003, 145). I argue that the U.S. media uses this framing technique in order to create the “inferior Orient” image of North Korea. The American security rhetoric creates the negative image of North Korea throughout the six-party talks, the stated purpose of which is peace-building. It is evident that the consistent technique of framing creates negative image around the North’s regime as the “other” and increases concerns surrounding nuclear weapons.

Full Context: PDF [원문보기]

Key Words: North Korea, Media Image, Gusterson, New York Times, Washington Post, Nuclear Orientalism