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Abstract
New works give us glimpses into North Korea, yet little of this translates to how the government frames issues or sees the outside world. In particular, we know little about Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. This paper proposes data mining using automated content analysis—computer software to analyzes text—to track trends in North Korean rhetoric. Using daily news reports from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) for 2010 provides an empirical basis for making claims on how Pyongyang attempts to frame nuclear issues. This paper suggests that North Korea largely identifies nuclear issues with the United States in contrast to the other parties in the Six Party talks. Furthermore, references to nuclear issues, as well as to Kim Jong Un, are remarkably absent during the two major military actions of 2010 (the Cheonan sinking and the shelling of Yeonpyeong island).
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by a Korean Studies Grant from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2011-R-11).
Notes
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29. This paper uses WordStat software from Provalis. See http://www.provalisresearch.com/wordstat/WordstatFeatures.html.
30. For example, several references to America and American were in relation to Latin America. These were recoded so that only references to the US are included for analysis.
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32. Similarly, actions belligerent actions in 2009 may have been a result of Kim Jong Il attempting to win over hardline military officials to back his chosen successor (Klinger, 2010).
33. In the KCNA, the term “Yeonpyeong” is never used, however the North Korean spelling of “Yonphyong” is referenced almost exclusively to the shelling, appearing only twice before the incident. In both of these cases, the KCNA refers to enemy forces amassing near the area. For clarity, this paper will refer to analyses of “Yonphyong” as “Yeonpyeong”.
34. The lower raw frequency of the US could be in part due to missing indirect references. Including the term “Yankee” within the US category, often seen in Korean language texts from North Korea, however provides no additional leverage. The additional term only appears 2 times, both in days where the US was already mentioned, and alterin-g the TF-IDF only to 117.6.
35. Of these additions, two dates were positively correlated and statistically significant at least at the .05 level: May 14th and December 1st.
36. For brevity, plural forms and other variations of terms were omitted from the table but included in the analysis.