The Mass Media Influence in Reporting on North Korea Picture 1: North Korea Source: http://www.mangauk.com/post.php?p=from-the-fatherland-with-love (accessed 09.05.14) Introduction This paper will discuss the mass media influence in reporting of North Korea by examining media that is internal and external to North Korea. Internal media channels are those that exist and operate inside North Korea ostensibly for the benefit and use of its citizens and also provide limited information to the West. External media refers to western mass media including particular South Korean media that broadcasts into North Korea. All these media help to provide the basis for the western understanding of North Korea. The paper will consider philosophical underpinnings of those media and how media ‘framing’ has guided the publics’ perception. Dehlsen P © 2013 1 Video 1: Telegraph compilation Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10522083/North- Koreas-worst-rants-since-Kim-Jong-uns-rise-to-power.html (accessed 12.05.14) North Korean Media Picture 2: Korean News Source: http://thewayofthegeek.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/korean-central-news-agency- announcement.png?w=459&h=180 (accessed 06.05.14) North Korean media is composed primarily of radio, television, print and Internet. According to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s 2008 assessment, there is no independent media and all radios and TVs are pre-tuned to government stations. The CIA state there are ‘four government-owned TV stations; the Korean Workers' Party owns and operates the Korean Central Broadcasting Station, and the state-run Voice of Korea operates an external broadcast service; the government prohibits listening to and jams foreign broadcasts (2008)” (CIA). Apparently in 1993 there were eleven TV stations, approximately two dozen AM and ten FM stations, eight domestic shortwave radio and one powerful international shortwave station. A Dehlsen P © 2013 2 number of newspapers are published including the Nodong Simmun (Worker’s Daily), Lloja (The Worker), Minju Chosn (Democratic Korea) and Nodong chngnyn (Working Youth). In addition there are specialized publications for the army, railway and teachers (Country Studies citing US Library of Congress records). The main news gathering and dissemination source is the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) which publishes daily papers for domestic consumption and daily press releases in English, Russian, French and Spanish for foreign consumption. The Foreign Languages Press Group also publishes a weekly newspaper and monthly magazine in English, Spanish and French (Country Studies). As for Internet use, very little is known although the World Statistics Pocketbook reports that in 2011 telephone subscription was only about 8.9% for a population of about 25 million (World Statistics p56). NBC news reports that about 1 million people have mobile phones but not with Internet access. Internet access is via China and sometimes by satellite but is ‘very strictly controlled’ and apparently limited to the government and military. Very few outside these bodies have had access to the Internet so much so that Reporters Without Borders named North Korea as one of the 12 ‘enemies’ of the Internet (Choney 2013). Picture 3: North Korean computer use Eric Schmidt, back row left, and former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson, back row right, look at North Korean soldiers working on computers at the Grand Peoples Study House in Pyongyang, North Korea on Jan. 9, 2013. Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/north-koreas-internet-what-internet-most-online- access-doesnt-exist-f1C9143426 (accessed 30.04.14) Freedom House 2005 report on freedom of the press in North Korea describe it as “extremely repressive” (Kerlekar 2005:4) and ranks it the lowest of all countries with a score of 97 of 100. All Dehlsen P © 2013 3 radios must be registered with officials and the radios are pre-set to government channels and North Koreans are liable to hard labour for accessing foreign media. According to the report, all journalists are members of the ruling party. The aim of journalism is the exaltation of Kim Jong-Il and journalist are punished harshly for even minor errors such as the ‘misspelling of public officials’. The regime portrays all dissidents and the foreign media as ‘liars attempting to “destabilize the government”’ (Kerlekar 2005:155). Ironically, North Koreans enjoy freedom of speech, press, assembly, associations and demonstrations under their Constitution1 provided that those freedoms are exercised in accordance with the Constitution which requires them to ‘follow socialist norms of life’ and support the government and party objectives. North Koreans are therefore prohibited from listening to foreign media broadcasts and can be liable to severe punishment for doing so (NK Constitution, Country Studies). Normative theories The constitution of North Korea refers to socialism and democracy but this is not the type of socialism and democracy the west normally understands. In contrast, Western descriptive terms include totalitarianism, communist, dictatorship and authoritarianism. According to Professor Dae- Kyu Yoon, North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship wherein the leader’s absolute power has been gained through Stalinist type purges and the elimination of all who threaten the leadership, facilitated by the Korean Workers Party’s (KWP) supremacy over official government organs. This power also rests on Juche ideology, a creative application of Marxist/Leninist ideology, that creates a ‘cult of personality’ around the leader, supplants all other philosophical and religious belief, demands ‘unquestionable loyalty’ and is the ‘ultimate ideology’ that guides the people and State (Yoon 2003). North Korean analyst B.R. Myers has a different view, for him North Korea is more like the 1940 fascist states of Europe, the notion of Juche is a fraud and has a race theory where North Koreans are the purest and most virtuous people (Myers 2013). In light of this Siebert’s Four Theories of the Press can provide some basis for understanding how the media operate in North Korea. McQuail notes however, that Seibert’s theories were developed during the time of the Cold War where freedom of the press was a central issue and USA was ‘actively trying to export its own ideology of liberalism and free enterprise’ (McQuail 177), and, according to Nerone (1995), the authors (Seibert et al 1956) ‘uncritically accepted the very ideological mystification the media owners propound to explain their own existence’ (Nerone 1995 cited in McQuail 2005:177). 1 A number of commentators refer to these freedoms as based on Article 53 however a 2005 copy of the Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Full Text) 1998, the freedoms are expressed under Article 67 (http://www.icrc.org/ihl- nat.nsf/0/14f67589c2110ebdc1257090002a8e1c/$FILE/Constitution%20North%20Korea%20-%20EN.pdf accessed 01.05.14) Dehlsen P © 2013 4 Soviet-Communist Theory Derived from Marxist, Leninist and Stalinist thoughts, under this theory the media should not be privately owned. State owns or directly controls all forms of mass media and that authority rests in the hands of a small group of party leaders. The role of the media is therefore to implement plans of the party and State, serve the interests of the working classes, unite the people and bring about societal change (Benson 2008, Epiclawyers). According to Benson the most important element is that the media ‘should provide a complete, objective view of the world following Marxist-Leninist principles, as defined by the communist-party-controlled state’ (Benson 2008). Under this system, the media is said to report less on the bad things that happen under communism and report more on the bad things that happen under the democratic system (see Epiclawyers). On Benson’s view North Korea falls into this category although in Epiclawyers view ‘technically, currently, no country’s media is fully under the Soviet-Communist system’ but some countries, including North Korea ‘possess characteristics’ of the system (Epiclawyers). It has been argued that the Soviet-Communist model has disappeared (Nerone 1995 cited in McQuail:176) presumably due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990, but clearly this is not the case as versions of communism survived at least in China, Cuba and North Korea (see Benson 2008). The Authoritarian Theory Under this theory there is strict control of content by the State and a general lack of freedom to criticize State policy. Media ownership can be either public or private with print mostly private and broadcast remaining public. Rather than being used to bring about societal change as in the Soviet- Communist theory, authoritarianism is more concerned with maintaining the status quo. The role of the media is to educate the people and act as the propaganda tool of the ruling party. Examples of countries practicing this theory include China, Burma, Iran, Saudi Arabia (Epiclawyers). According to Siebert et al (1956), under the authoritarian theory journalism should always be subordinate to the State in maintaining social order or achieving political goals. Under more extreme authoritarianism, or totalitarianism, journalism proactively promotes and extends totalizing State control under strict censorship conditions (Benson 2008). Libertarian and Social Responsibility Theories Directly opposite to authoritarian and communist theories, social responsibility theory is modelled on the libertarian model (not discussed in this paper) and provides some balance to corporatisation of the media. Social responsibility allows for government to intervene in media operations if the public interest is not being served. Further, the media should self-regulate following codes of ethics and professional conduct, and, importantly, should be ‘truthful, accurate, fair, objective and relevant’ (McQuail:172, Staffs). There is much argument about the detail but US media, in general, operates under this type of model. Dehlsen P © 2013 5 Information flows in and out of North Korea Travel to North Korea is strictly controlled and access by western journalists even more so.