A Narrative Colonized: who can speak for North Korea and how?

A Narrative Colonized: who can speak for North Korea and how?

“Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…”

Kipling’s iconic words, written during the mire of British colonialism, have never seemed so apt for the Korean watcher community. A growing interest in North Korean affairs in the West has been met by a stark absence from the East: the Korean voice. Almost nonexistent within the Western mainstream media’s narrative of the peninsula, the Western voice increasingly dominates and determines who can speak for North Korea and how.ⁱ

For a hungry Western audience, the dearth of Korean voices is problematic. Far outnumbering the more conscientious and nuanced websites run by knowledgeable North Korea watchers (such as New Focus International), sensationalism and misinformation has become commonplace within the mainstream media’s reporting of North Korea. Whether this is a direct result of the non-engagement of North Korean exiles and Korean experts or simply a case of journalistic sloppiness is debatable. However, the sustenance of a media image of North Korea — and by default, its citizens — as a foreign policy, a nuclear weapons state, or a teetering, hermetic curiosity has encouraged derision and proselytization, but little understanding.

This divorcing of North Korea’s international from its domestic, the state from its people, and the fact from the fiction, has led many in the mainstream media to privilege the extraordinary over the ordinary.ⁱⁱ These same standards applied to any other country would rightly be deemed ludicrous. But a mixture of power and political dominance, a perceived superiority of knowledge, journalistic laziness, a thinly concealed racism, and an absence of North Korean voices continue to skew the Western media image of North Korea and its people.

Current state of affairs

Whilst it may seem odd to bemoan a Western, English-language discourse dominated by Western, English-language voices, if the media is to concern itself with the international realm, surely a diversity of voices is essential? Of course, a reluctance on the part of the mainstream press to travel beyond their known compass points to truly ‘know’ North Koreans, their history, culture, and society is hardly unique. The same criticism could easily be applied to media coverage of many non-Western states and societies. But the habitual absence of indigenous voices in media discussions concerning North Korea is distinctive, especially when compared to cases such as Myanmar.ⁱⁱⁱ

This is not to say that the Korean voice is necessarily superior or uncorrupted. Korea has long been permeated, influenced, and shaped by Western ideals and ideas; and vice versa. Nor is it to say that the Western perspective is of no value for Korea — it is an equally essential part of the conversation; and, increasingly, column inches are being filled by knowledgeable voices, such as those of the likes of Aidan Foster-Carter, Adam Cathcart, and Andrei Lankov. But as websites, such as the Daily NK or Rimjingang, evidence, many of the tens of thousands of North Koreans who have fled North Korea over the past six decades (and those still inside the country today) have a voice that needs hearing.

Within this debate, the pulls and pushes of new forms of media on traditional news outlets must also be accounted for. Increased competition and declining profits, combined with an almost immediate expiry date for news, has led quantity to trump quality across the mainstream board. Shaped by this evolving media landscape, North Korea has succumbed to caricature-led depictions that some may see as relatively harmless; but as the infamous BBC Newsnight documentary revealed, misplaced representations can quickly enter the public consciousness as fact. For as long as pseudo-authorities, such as Newsnight’s John Sweeney, reach larger audiences than North Korean voices, this distorted and melodramatic narrative will continue to be influential.

The limits of Western universalism

Away from this public discourse, the English-speaking academic world is slowly beginning to engage with Korean voices. Publications, such as North Korean Review, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, and The Yonsei Journal of International Studies are all filling historical voids.

Within the politically influential world of International Relations — where academics and foreign policy decision-makers exchange roles with regularity — changes are especially important if a new discourse is to be forged. Past studies on the influence of Western thinking within Korean academia found Eurocentric knowledge to have been “imported as completed products devoid of reflections”, serving as “the most powerful [cultural] means to shape the way Koreans [looked] at the world” in the Cold War-era.^iv The late Ken Waltz, a towering figure in the world of IR, even commented that “it would be ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics based on [the histories of countries such as] Malaysia and Costa Rica.” Recent challenges to these approaches must be welcomed.^v

Doubtlessly, however, this will be a challenging task. As Foucault observed, the ascendency of European nations on the international stage, and the Enlightenment thinking that such hegemony spawned, still sets “the trajectory of modernity firmly in the West.”^vi Time-honored academic theories, hard-won academic careers, and prestigious university departments have all been built upon the West’s dominance, and the implications of a truly democratic academy would likely reshape the epistemological and ontological maps. Yet as the realization that the West’s own histories cannot fully understand or explain Asia’s past dawns, scholars, such as Amitav Acharya and David Kang, are gradually transforming marginalized histories into viable academic realities from within, allowing Korea’s past to join its present.

North Korea redux? Engaging indigenous voices

Despite the many epistemological, linguistic, and logistical issues that will accompany a dialogue between a West and non-West, such conversations should, at the very least, advance English-language studies of how North Koreans view the world. Similarly, within the journalistic and public spheres, one would hope that the increasingly voluble voices of North Korean refugees and exiles can enter the public consciousness. Exposing the human faces and stories of North Korea is a vital task in redefining who can speak for North Korea and how.

Exactly how the Western mainstream media’s image of North Korea and its citizens can be reimagined is, however, open to questioning. Would additional Western news organizations based in North Korea, akin to the Associated Press’ bureau, gradually revise media and public opinions on North Korea? Or, conversely, and as has been alleged by many, would such a step merely grant the North Korean regime a louder mouthpiece for its propaganda and fail to report on critical issues? Whatever the answer may be, it is vital that the North Korean voice plays some part within the global media chatter.

Where does this leave the future of North Korea as seen from the West? Evidently, there is ample scope for competing perspectives and critiques to enter the English-language discourse on North Korea. Whether this emanates from exiled North Korean elites or ordinary refugees, South Korean experts, policymakers, and academics, or Western academics in the fields of, for example, post-colonialism, international relations, literature, and sociology, all should be seriously considered. Additionally, groups and organizations actively occupied with North Korean affairs should be engaged. These steps may then lead to a discourse that defies exclusionary and overly-simplistic narratives. And ultimately, what a case as complex as North Korea demands is critiques that are equally complex, critiques that challenge our established views, and critiques that create conflict in how we, as Westerners, perceive North Korea and its people.

Alexander James is a graduate of the London School of Economics and has written for NKNews, SinoNK  and openDemocracy. This article does not necessarily reflect the views of EAHRNK.