![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This article examines the patterns in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (North Korea’s) use of hostile rhetoric in its internationally-directed messaging. The article first places North Korea’s belligerent rhetoric in the context of that country’s capacity to threaten the US and its Northeast Asian allies; indeed many analysts worry that Pyongyang’s rhetoric represents a conflict escalation risk or even a casus belli. Following this, the article discusses the common explanations – irrationality/incompetence, lack of audience costs, inter alia – for why the North Korean regime employs such hostile rhetoric, and finds these explanations wrong or misleading. The main analysis section describes the results of a study of 10 years of English-language propaganda published by the KCNA (North Korea’s state news agency). A multiple regression model is used to test the relationship between North Korea’s hostile rhetoric and a set of independent variables. The statistical tests indicate a mixed correlation of North Korean rhetoric to the independent variables. One major finding is that there is no correlation between hostile North Korean rhetoric and the country’s kinetic provocations. The conclusion discusses the role that North Korea’s rhetoric plays within the country’s larger adversarial relationship to the US, South Korea, and Japan.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This is part one of an ongoing project. Part two will examine the same phenomenon from 2007 to 2016. Obviously much has changed since 2006, including a leadership transfer to Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang’s improved WMD, increased marketization of North Korea’s economy, the end of the Six-Party Talks, tightened sanctions, leadership changes in Seoul, Washington, Beijing, and Tokyo. Nonetheless, the historical analysis of pre-2007 North Korean rhetoric is relevant for the present. This is primarily because institutional habits, methods, and prerogatives persist despite leadership changes, even in North Korea (a fortiori, given the country’s sclerotic bureaucracy). North Korea’s English-language propaganda for international consumption is still produced and coordinated by the KCNA, which has not undergone major changes during the period 2007–2016. Moreover, as of 2016 North Korea’s hostile English-language rhetoric exhibits few differences compared to 2006 (see Cha et al., Citation2016).
2 The exact statement from Cruz is ‘We will carpet-bomb them [ISIS] into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!’.
3 One notes that North Korea did not invent this rhetorical register, of course, as it borrowed liberally both from Soviet era language (often translated directly into Korean without regard to idiom) and WWII-era Japanese militaristic slogans (see Beech, Citation2017; Myers, Citation2011). However, in contrast to North Korea, both of these countries largely confined militaristic rhetorical excess to either domestic consumption or wartime.
4 The India–Pakistan dyad provides one possible example of militaristic societies’ inflammatory rhetoric for international consumption, although, as with Nasser’s Egypt (see below), the example is imperfect. In the first place, the frequency and persistence of bellicose rhetoric over a long time span is not comparable to that of North Korea. Moreover, the aggressive rhetorical exchanges by Indian and Pakistani leaders have mostly been directed at each other, not at both each other and the larger international community, as is the case with North Korean rhetoric. See Rai (Citation2009).
5 The closest rhetorical comparison to the Pyongyang leadership may be former (1956–1970) Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, although his government’s inflammatory rhetoric was also less frequent and menacing than that of North Korea. Nasser was famous for regular use of fiery nationalist, pan-Arab, anti-imperial/-Western statements intended for consumption internationally (Sasley, Citation2012). Far from damaging his international reputation, he was considered a hero throughout much of the Arab world, and was massively feted upon his death. The parallels to the North Korea situation are imperfect: (i) Nasser’s intemperate rhetoric was indeed often intended for international consumption, and was sometimes rabidly critical of the West, but his speeches were overwhelmingly in Arabic (not a language readily understood by the general public in Western countries that he criticized), unlike Pyongyang’s rhetoric in English; (ii) the audience for Nasser’s comments was usually the populations and leaders of other Arab states, not the targets (i.e. the US and Europe, Israel) themselves of the belligerent rhetoric; (iii) Nasser’s Egypt sometimes backed up its threats with actions, entering into three regional wars (the 1956 Sinai campaign, the 1960s North Yemen civil war, and the 1967 Arab-Israel war), a type of behavior that North Korea has largely avoided (excepting comparatively minor provocations).
6 There is a historical track-record for this behavior. The United Front Department has, for example, produced and disseminated to the North Korean public falsified reports and articles – purportedly from leading South Korean intellectuals – praising the Kim dynasty and North Korean regime (and, of course, attacking the US, South Korea, and Japan). See Jang (Citation2014, p. 12–13).
7 Such databases do, however, exist for North Korea’s domestic, Korean-language propaganda, as well as for specific terms (deterrence, plutonium, etc) used by the KCNA in discussing its nuclear program. See: Myers (Citation2011), Rich (Citation2012, Citation2014).
8 Contact author at [email protected] for original file downloads from the KCNA website.
9 See point (e) above.
10 The threats are generally hypothetical in nature (‘if the US does X, North Korea will do Y’), but this mitigating factor in the bellicosity of the threat rhetoric does not detract from its perception of hostility or sui generis nature. The hypothetical nature of the threats is addressed in the Conclusion.
11 N-type and N-target are non-identical, as some rhetoric for a given article was addressed to multiple countries simultaneously.
12 I counted only one instance of a particular locution (e.g. ‘human scum’) per article, but I did count multiple expressions of the same type of rhetorical locution per article, as well as multiple types of locutions per article.
13 I exclude leadership changes as separate independent variables because there are too few of them in the US, South Korea, and Japan (during the study period) to make them meaningful for the model. Also, the little face-to-face contact between Pyongyang’s elites and those in Washington and Tokyo means that the development of personal relationships between these countries’ top leaders are not model-relevant.
14 I only include the rhetoric for the month after the events of H4 and H4A because North Korea could not know in advance when US overseas operations (or preludes to them) would occur. Thus, Pyongyang’s rhetoric could not be affected beforehand.
15 That is, 1222 instances of belligerent rhetoric by locution type. Per country, N = 1434 because some instances of inflammatory rhetoric were directed at multiple countries.
16 For example, ‘if the US encroaches even 0.001 mm of North Korean territory, we will mercilessly destroy the aggressors.
17 For different reasons, Denny Roy made this case about North Korea in 1994. See Roy (Citation1994).
18 The UFD handles inter-Korean relations and official/semi-official overseas outfits propagating pro-North Korean propaganda.