In his 2004 book North Korea: Another Country, historian Bruce Cumings described the irony of corporate media’s perpetual narrative of North Korea as an unhinged or devious adversary of the US with hostile nuclear ambitions:
Almost always, media discussion of North Korea assumes that Washington is in a position of original innocence, and the North is assiduously trying to obtain and then to use “weapons of mass destruction”—the ubiquitous media trope for the arsenals of American enemies since the Cold War ended. Yet the American record in Northeast Asia since the 1940s is one of consistent use of, or threats to use, those same weapons.
Little has changed since then, as FAIR has documented the media’s one-sided tendency to cast Washington’s actions as defensive responses to “threats” from Official Enemies (Extra!, 5/13; FAIR.org, 6/6/19).
In covering North Korea’s series of missile tests over the past few months, US media continue to portray Pyongyang’s actions as unwarranted provocations to obtain an advantage over the US in negotiations, while dismissing the North’s stated objectives for their missile tests.
USA Today (8/2/19) depicts North Korean missile tests as “provocations”–while US/South Korean mock invasions of the North are dismissed as a “pretext.”
USA Today’s “Trump Dismisses North Korea Missile Tests. Experts Say He’s Giving Kim’s Regime a Free Pass” (8/2/19) portrayed Trump as an indulgent and careless leader taken advantage of by Kim Jong-un, for correctly noting that the latest short-range missile tests aren’t a violation of their 2018 Singapore commitment to halt long-range and nuclear missile testing, despite their violating UN Security Council resolutions.
The “expert” sources in the report described Trump as giving Kim an “invitation to push the envelope when it comes to additional provocations,” and dismissed North Korea’s stated rationale for these missile tests–that they are a protest against US/South Korea joint military exercises–as a “pretext” to “gain leverage” in future negotiations, without explaining the outcomes they hope to obtain from these negotiations.
The Washington Post’s alarmist “Fast, Low and Hard to Stop: North Korea’s Missile Tests Crank Up the Threat Level” (8/15/19) featured yet more “experts” who noted that North Korea’s missile tests “significantly raised the country’s military capabilities and the threat they pose to South Korea and US forces on the peninsula,” and showcased weapons designed “specifically to confound South Korea’s missile-defense system.” Like USA Today, the Post noted that the missile tests have the “additional benefit” of ramping up “pressure on the United States to return to the negotiating table with a better offer” than the one Trump presented to North Korea at Hanoi in February, without explaining how North Korea would like the agreement to be improved.
The New York Times’ “North Korea Missile Tests, ‘Very Standard’ to Trump, Show Signs of Advancing Arsenal” (9/2/19) informed readers that North Korea is testing missiles “with greater range and maneuverability” that could “overwhelm American defenses in the region,” and provide more evidence of a “program designed to defeat the defenses Japan has deployed, with American technology, at sea and on shore.” This in addition to threatening “at least eight American bases in those countries, housing more than 30,000 troops.”
The Times casually referred to US efforts under the Obama administration to launch covert cyberattacks on the country to sabotage its missile tests, as well as Trump’s threats to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” without describing his statements as “threats,” or noting that the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review considers cyberattacks on “American infrastructure” grounds for a nuclear response (New York Times, 1/16/18).
CNN (9/9/19) creatively suggests that missiles that traveled less than 400 miles in tests could “threaten US.” (North Korea is 3,000 miles from Alaska, the closest state.)
CNN’s “North Korea Testing ‘Creative’ Weapons That Could Threaten US, Experts Say” (9/9/19) reported that “experts” claim that North Korea’s missile tests this year show that Pyongyang is “testing weapons to target weak points in the advanced missile defense system that protects the US, Japan and South Korea,” for “the first time” since it halted ballistic missile testing for 17 months since November 2017. Like the above reports, CNN noted that North Korea “suggested” that its missile tests are a response to US/South Korean joint military exercises, and Seoul’s purchase of American F-35 stealth fighter jets, without explaining why North Korea considers these actions so provocative.
I’ve noted before how the media consistently mislead readers by refusing to acknowledge how US “missile defense systems” are actually offensive systems (FAIR.org, 5/17/19, 7/12/19). One can easily imagine that US media would characterize as “threatening” countries allied against the US placing such systems near US borders, because it would help secure a nuclear first-strike advantage against the US by reducing the threat of retaliatory strikes. But media fail to acknowledge the US and South Korea’s own efforts to upgrade their missile capacities, and give scant coverage to US plans to install medium-range missiles near North Korea, following Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (FAIR.org, 3/7/18; Newsweek, 8/14/19).
Although some of the above reports correctly note that US/South Korean military exercises “have been scaled back to be less provocative,” and are now largely computer simulations, they diminish any rationale behind North Korea’s missile tests by omitting why the previous military exercises were so provocative in the first place. These “military exercises,” or war games, were notorious for simulating the invasion and occupation of North Korea, decapitation of the North Korean leadership and a nuclear first-strike (CounterSpin, 2/23/18). These reports also omit how these new war games continue to simulate the occupation of North Korea after an invasion (NK News, 8/10/19), and how the North’s missile tests began in May, months after the US first broke its Singapore agreement not to conduct more of these provocative war games (Financial Times, 8/28/18).
But more importantly, these reports effectively pretend that North Korea isn’t serious about wanting a halt to provocative US/South Korean war games, insisting that North Korea is actually seeking “leverage” for some hidden objective that is conveniently never outlined. This is consistent with corporate media’s tendency to obscure and misrepresent North Korea’s repeated offers to give up its nuclear weapons program as saying the opposite (Intercept, 8/25/17), while the Trump administration continues to reject China and North Korea’s numerous offers to suspend missile tests in exchange for a suspension of the threatening annual war games (South China Morning Post, 11/17/17; New York Times, 6/21/19).
An elderly woman and grandchild survey the ruins of the Pyongyang home, bombed by the US during the Korean War.
These “war games” are not just theoretical exercises for the North Korean government; while both the US and North Korea have traded threats, only one of them has ever killed millions of the other’s people, and only one has used nuclear weapons offensively (FAIR.org, 9/27/17). The North remembers how up to 20 percent of the population were killed in the Korean War as the US dropped more bombs in Korea than it did in the entire Pacific theatre in World War II, targeting “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick on top of another,” as war supporter Dean Rusk, later secretary of State, put it (Washington Post, 3/24/15). The war is technically still ongoing, as the US never withdrew its troops or signed a peace treaty, as required by the 1953 armistice.
FAIR has already documented how corporate media consider the possibility of peace between North Korea and South Korea to be a threat to the US, despite reducing the likelihood of nuclear war (FAIR.org, 2/14/18, 3/15/18, 6/14/18). The false depiction of North Korea as an intractable enemy serves as a convenient scapegoat for the failure of Washington’s aggressive policy of “maximum pressure” to achieve peace and denuclearization in the Korean peninsula.
Preserving the North Korean bogeyman bolsters the longstanding bipartisan US policy of maintaining a military presence in Asia against China (CounterPunch, 9/22/17; Wall Street Journal, 1/15/19). It also allows the US to pursue the same objectives it had when it entered the Korean civil war on behalf of South Korea’s capitalist system in 1950, and supports what the Trump administration calls a “free and open Indo-Pacific” (for US investments). Compared to this agenda, torpedoing the denuclearization of the Korea peninsula (Truthout, 9/24/18) seems a small price to pay.
In 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson made an important speech about US interests around the world but failed to mention South Korea. If he had done so, then the invasion of South Korea would probably not have happened and several million people would not have been killed.
Is it possible to know what Prof. Bruce Cumings’s opinion is, of this piece that begins by citing his thinking on the subject today? I would welcome a message from the writer, Mr. Cho, but in pursuing the point, one friend whose livelihood depends to some extent on “corporate media” has dubbed it “sophomoric.” I do not, and woud defent the premise on social media, if I knew more of Cumings’ work, which I have known about for many years, since I came to Korea in ’87, to be exact, and have been here since.
Two of the early tests need to be investigated (not to mention many other international “incidents”) for their impact on the futures markets.
The futures market — CME Group – shuts down trading for an hour for a “maintenance period” from 4-5pm CST. North Korea made two of the most controversial launches during that period causing great volatility when the Asian markets opened.
These missile tests have nothing to do with the US and everything to do with South Korea.
The South Korean President Moon Jae In came into power pledging to restore the Sunshine Policy of 2000-2007 (when South Korea attempted to appease North Korea by providing them billions of dollars in aid, investment and diplomatic/political concessions.)
What’s more, Moon actually did sign an agreement with Kim Jong Un promising to restore unilateral aid/investment per the Sunshine Policy last spring.
(More specifically, a clause in the Panmunjom Declaration promises to restore “all previous agreements” between North and South Korea. That includes the 2000 and 2007 Inter Korean Summit Agreements, which formed the backbone of the Sunshine Policy.)
However, Moon was NOT able to get the ROK National Assembly to ratify the agreement; the South Korean conservative opposition parties have pledged never to support appeasement of North Korea.
NOR was Moon able to get the international community to lift sanctions off of NK or grant SK sanctions waivers.
Worst of all, Moon’s approval ratings are slipping, and next Spring is South Korea’s midterm elections.
If the South Korean conservatives win next Spring and retake the legislature, they are going to block and reverse all of Moon’s promises and concessions to North Korea.
Put simply… South Korea made a bunch of promises to North Korea that it might not be able to keep.
Naturally, Kim Jong Un is angry. This spate of short-range missile tests are either his attempt to snub/humiliate Moon as punishment, or they are an attempt to wring out what ever concessions NK can get from SK NOW (in case Moon becomes a lame-duck president next year.)
It’s astonishing; you (correctly) dismiss American press coverage of North Korea as flippant and hysterical… … … And yet you make ALL of the same mistakes they make.
Namely America-centricity, omission of the historical and political context, and ignoring the crucial roll of South Korea in all of this.
(Seriously, you criticize the US for “provoking” North Korea by staging military exercises with South Korea… Okay… Why don’t you criticize South Korea for HOSTING them? Do you think South Korea has no sovereignty/agency?)
This was a deeply disappointing read.
“These missile tests have nothing to do with the US and everything to do with South Korea.”
Interesting. I don’t claim an omniscient understanding of all the North Korean leadership’s motivations for the missile tests. Can you actually prove an extravagant claim like that these missile tests have *nothing* to do with the United States? You can’t, because your assertion is directly contradicted by public statements from North Korean leaders saying otherwise.
I was aware that Moon was campaigning on restoring the Sunshine policy and that he signed an agreement with the North. The North is rejecting negotiations with the South in order to directly deal with the US, not with the South. The reason is obvious and doesn’t need spelling out.
I do, in fact, think South Korea has some agency. How else would Moon have gone against the US’s wishes to meet with Kim himself, and work together for things like the Olympics? However, if you think South Korea is free to do anything it wants without any constraints imposed by the US, you have a very shallow understanding of South Korea and its relationship with the US.
You’re right that South Korea deserves blame for hosting these drills. However, you’re simply wrong if you think they can just scrap them regardless of what the US wants. You do realize that the point of criticizing *American* media coverage is to have an influence on *American* policy, right? The rest doesn’t need explaining.
The point that the US is perpetuating the crisis in Korea to justify continued US military presence near China is a crucial one that is NEVER spoken about on MSM. One former general accidentally said as much as Rachel Maddow’s show about a year ago. No one paid any attention.