The Narrative Threat of North Korea: An Initial Assessment

Transcription

1 The Narrative Threat of North Korea: An Initial Assessment Strategic Discourse Analysis (STRADA) Group, New Mexico State University April 29, 2013 In recent weeks, analysts, scholars, and government leaders have struggled with what type of assessment to construct given the blustering and threatening discourse emanating from the capital of North Korea. A range of interpretations goes from they are doing brinksmanship discourse (all threat, no action) to they are previewing their imminent launch of nuclear missiles in a way that will generate massive military retaliation (pre-violence framing). In this brief paper, we offer a discourse analytic view of what the leader of NK is saying. To be scientific, all of our conclusions are data-based and qualified. The Current Situation Threats of nuclear weapons usage by NK are not new. Such threats, due to potential and devastating consequences, have to be taken seriously. At the end of March 2012, NK was announced to have cut its military hotline communication with South Korea (New York Times, 3/28/2013). A day earlier, NK had declared that it had all of its missiles and artillery units on the highest alert in preparation for strikes on the U.S. and South Korea (Sang-Hun, 2013). NK spoke militantly against the annual joint U.S.- South Korea military drills in the region. NK described the tense circumstances as a situation where war may break out any moment. NK even threatened pre-emptive military nuclear strikes on the U.S. and South Korea. U.S. military experts differ on how much nuclear missile capability actually exists in NK. James Hardy of Jane s Weekly, for example, says that NK cannot reach Hawaii or Guam as it claims it can (Sang-Hun, 2013). However, the Defense Intelligence Agency (AID) says that NK can deliver a small nuclear weapon with ballistic missiles (Armstrong, April 11, 2013). This is, however, given technical problems with reliability and accuracy. In order to get NK to agree to end its nuclear program, China, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and Russia initiated six-party talks in August 2003 (Arms Control Association, 2013). The six-party talks with NK broke down after 2009, however. While the Bush administration referred to NK as a rogue state, and part of the access of evil, the Obama administration refers to it as an outlier. NK has demonstrated brinksmanship in its discourse for many years under several leaders, but it has also committed provocative and deadly acts of violence, such as the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in 2010 and a terrorist strike that killed South Korean cabinet members in Burma in the 1980s. Some experts say its acts of provocation go back to 1968 (CFR, 2013). NK expert Robert Litwak argues that NK commands attention with its possession of nuclear weapons and uses this as a negotiating strategy to gain external assistance for its failed nation and thereby to bolster the survivability of its ruling family and regime. James Clapper, national intelligence director, also postulates that NK uses threats to negotiate and get other nations to provide aid to it. 1

2 The Strategic Culture of North Korea According to Bermudez, 2009, there are six key principles in the strategic culture of the Democratic People s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or what we call North Korea. These are 1) survival of the ruling clan that goes back to 1948 and the regime of Kim Il-sung; 2) eradicate all internal political threats to the ruling family; 3) reunification of the Korean peninsula; 4) maintain overwhelming military strength; 5) develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles; and 6) deter moves by the United States and South Korea (Republic of Korea). Perceptions of the threatening nature of the United States stem from the belief that the U.S. is likely to use WMD against NK. After Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of , Japan annexed Korea in Its control of Korea was brutal. In the 1930s, the Japanese were experimenting with chemical and biological weapons to use against the Chinese. At this time, NK s Kim-Il-sung was a young guerrilla fighter. He and other NK emerging leaders were impressed with the American use of WMD on Japan and how WMD became the ultimate weapon in the world. The Korean War was termed by the NK leaders as the Fatherland Liberation War. American intervention in the war was viewed by the NK leaders as evidence that America was a primary enemy and a bully interfering with internal Korean affairs (Bermudez, 2009). NK leaders began to disseminate disinformation among the NK population, who said that the U.S. was using chemical and biological weapons against its soldiers. They said that America worked with Japan in doing this. When President Harry Truman threatened to use nuclear weapons on NK, the latter viewed his statements as proof that such an attack was likely (Bermudez, 2009). NK has never given up the belief that the U.S. is its main enemy, that South Korea is an American puppet government and that the U.S. is a nuclear threat (Bermudez, 2009). A 2005 statement by the NK foreign Ministry said the following: Our nuclear weapons will remain a self-defensive deterrent under any circumstances. Today s reality shows that only strong power can protect justice and defend the truth (Bermudez, 2009, p. 197). From 1955 on, NK leaders began to develop a so-called Chuche ideology in their nation. The Chuche ideology is a belief system that concerns self-reliance and national identity. It is intended to affect every aspect of life in the nation. It is used to frame what is seen as factional enemies, diplomacy, influence from Russia and China, and American imperialism. (Bermudez, 2009). All power in the nation emanates from the ruling family. Disloyalty to the family can result in imprisonment or death (Bermudez, 2009). Latent Semantic Analysis of Kim Jon Un Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is an automated text analysis program designed to identify relationships between documents and terms using a set of concepts related to the documents and terms used in the training corpus (Landauer, Foltz, & Laham, 1999). The choice of LSA over other context analysis was justified by the fact that LSA is able not just to find occurrences of particular words, but also occurrences 2

3 of words with similar meanings. We assessed eight speeches of Kim Jong-un delivered between April 2012 and March 2013 using LSA. These speeches were given on the following dates -See Appendix A for transcripts: 1) 6 April ) April 15, ) July 26, ) October 30, ) December 29, ) January 1, ) January 29, ) 31 March 2013 First, we analyzed the respective similarities between the 06-Apr-2012 and 31-Mar-2013 speeches on the one hand - (1) and (8) from the list above - and all the other speeches. Figure 1 shows the results of this analysis: the Y axis shows the similarity between the reference and target speeches, and the X axis shows the date of the speeches used for comparison to (1) and (8). Figure 1. Similarities Between Speeches 1 The two reference speeches, (1) and (8), represent respectively the earliest speech and the most recent speech in the collection. This choice of reference speeches was made to reveal the changes in context and style between the first and the last speech. 1 A quotient of 1.0 would show total similarity. 3

4 First, it can be seen from Figure 1 that the topic similarity between speeches was precisely detected. A higher mutual similarity between a pair of documents reflects that the pair of documents addresses the same issues. A low similarity between speeches indicates that the topics or subjects differ between those speeches. The speeches of Oct 30, 2012, Dec 29, 2012 and Jan 29, 2013 are less similar to the speech of Mar 31, i.e The speaker Kim Jun Un addresses different issues within these speeches from what is in the Mar 31, 2013 speech. After this initial evaluation, we aimed to explore further the content of the speeches by comparing these speeches to relevant concepts: "war" "justice" "death" "socialist country" "weapon," and "dignity honor." The choice of these words/sentences was implied by the goal of the study as well as the words prominent in the speeches. Figure 2. Similarities Between Words/Concepts and the Speeches. In Figure 2, where the X axis indicates the speeches per date and the Y axis shows the similarity between the words and the speech, we can conclude that the sentences or concepts most relevant to the speeches as a whole are dignity honor and socialist country, since these concepts have the highest similarity to the speeches. We can thus tell that these words and concepts are a reasonable summarization of the overall content of the speeches. War and weapon showed less similarity. We added turtle sky as a control 4

5 sentence as it not related or relevant to the speeches. This control sentence is intended to be about content unlikely to be related in any way to the speeches. Figure 3. shows a closer look at the results of comparing the focus words "war", "socialist country", "weapon", and "dignity honor" to the speeches. Figure 3. Similarities Between Focus Words/Concepts and the Speeches. Tentative Assessment Based on the LSA described above, we offer the following observations about the discourse of the current NK leader: 1 The speeches might sound provocative and violent, but they are stressing one concept which is dignity and honor. 2 Even if the tone might sound harsh, using the concepts of weapon and war is not a core message of these speeches. Conclusion The surface level of North Korean leadership discourse appears bellicose and violent, the kind of communication that precedes violence or warfare. Deeper analysis, combining history, and linguistics, 5

6 indicates that NK may be using violent communication to secure particular resources and protection. There might be other audiences targeted by these speeches, who are most likely North Koreans themselves. On the other hand, there are factors that may be unspoken in the public discourse of the leader that would belie more intent to become physically violent against South Korea or other nations. References: Arms Control Association. (2013). Retrieved April 26, 2013, from Armstrong, C. K., (2013, April 11). Ignoring North Korea New York Times. Retrieved from Bermudez, J. (2009) North Korea and the political use of strategic culture. In Jeannie Johnson, Kerry Kartchner, and Jeffrey Lasen (Eds.). Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp Landauer, T. K., Foltz, P. W., & Laham, D. (1998). Introduction to latent semantic analysis. Retrieved from Sang-Hun, C. (2013). North Korea cuts off the remaining military hotlines with South Korea. New York Times, March 17, CFR (2013). A new containment policy for Iran, North Korea. Council on Foreign Relations, April 11,

7 Appendix A. List of Speeches Used in The Study # Date Speech URL 1. April 6, 2012 Kim Jong Un Calls for Holding Kim Jong Il in High Esteem Link 2. April 15, 2012 Kim Jong Un's speech at the Kim Il Sung Centennial Celebration Link 3. July 26, 2012 Let Us Step Up the Building of a Thriving Country Link 4. October 30, 2012 Kim Jong Un Speech at Kim Il Sung Military University Link 5. December 29, 2012 Kim Jong Un Speaks at Banquet for Celebrating Satellite Launch Link 6. January 1, New Year Address Link 7. January 29, 2013 Opening Address at WPK Cell Secretaries Meeting Link 8. March 31, 2013 Kim Jong Un speech at the plenary meeting of the WKP Central Committee Link 7