North Korea’s nuclear
cinema
Pyongyang has lost media control, and
that’s why nukes are taking center stage.
I.
Deliver a story that arouses the audience’s interest. (6 points each)
·
In 1985, two decades before North Korea
conducted its first nuclear test, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unleashed a terrorizing
monster.
·
This monster stormed the Korean countryside and
after siding with the impoverished peasant population, turned against the
people and presumably, feasted on the flesh and blood of their children.
·
It resembled a gigantic Minotaur, and drew
comparisons to the fictitious Japanese Godzilla.
·
And indeed it should. The giant beast – as you
may have figured out by now – was a North Korean cinematic creation.
·
The movie, produced by Kim Jong Il, has significance
today, because it created an image more real than real. The monster was, like
other Hollywood villains, a hyperreal, or a simulation that surpassed reality,
and was made possible by visual effects and technology. And the film itself,
makes you wonder, what else has North Korea created that could be called
hyperreal in our digital age?
II. Pose
a problem or question that has to be solved or answered.
·
I start with this story of a relatively obscure
film from North Korea’s past in an attempt to address a pressing problem we
associate with the country. (1)
·
Why does the NKorea keep testing nuclear
weapons, and launching long-range rockets? (2)
·
This is the most significant issue, and one that
Americans most associate with North Korea: its nuclear weapons program. Indeed,
North Korea’s nuclear program isn’t just a U.S. problem, it’s an international
problem. (3)
·
North Korea’s insistence that it develop nuclear
weapons has vexed just about everybody, including old time allies like China
and Russia, but it doesn’t seem to mind, because it has claimed it as a veto
technology that can deter more powerful countries like the United States. (4)
·
But why does it need it, when back in 2005 the
United States provided a security guarantee, a pledge that it wouldn’t attack
or invade? And why now, when for decades the North actually managed to get by
without testing weapons of mass destruction? (5)
III. Offer a solution to the
problem you raised.
·
To answer this question, I looked elsewhere for
a fuller understanding of what makes the country tick. (1)
·
And I didn’t have to look farther than North
Korea’s media network. (2)
·
Since its earliest days to the present, propaganda
has been ubiquitous in North Korea, and we now know most North Korean
households own televisions tuned to KCTV, the state channel, which devotes much
of its programming to footage of missiles, military training and state power. Fire-in-the-sky
type of spectacles. (3)
·
These images are familiar to us as well, and are
shown frequently on CNN, the nightly news. So we, too, are exposed to these
images ad nauseum, and may have grown
a bit immune to them. (4)
·
Now, step back for a bit, and consider, if you
could, and imagine what a ballistic missile must look like to the average,
impoverished North Korean. Terrifying, right? (5)
·
Because, like the powerful image of an ancient
monster tyrannizing the Korean peasantry, weapons are meant to shock and awe
the North Korean viewer, and made to appear as if they were real, which they
very well could be. (6)
·
But these images
are also what the French critical theorist Jean Baudrillard would call hyperreal
displays of North Korean sovereignty and authority, meaning, one, they are
extraordinary and simplifies a complex phenomenon, two, they may or may not have
an origin in reality, which I’ll get to later, and three their very apparition
on the screen subsequently affects reality, that is, the geophysical space that
we all occupy, and the policy choices different governments make. In short,
they take on a life of their own. (7)
·
So, am I saying North Korea’s weapons aren’t
real, or its threats are nothing but bluster? Far from it. North Korea
maintains facilities to develop weapons, and its propaganda would not be nearly
as effective, if it didn’t have elements of reality and plausibility embedded
into its propaganda. We should be careful before we draw hasty conclusions. (8)
·
But what I am saying is that, in a country where
all art became political, especially under an autocrat like Kim Jong Il, it
might only have been natural for the political and the militaristic to be
assembled in the service of art, and with the arrival of information
technologies, turned into reproducible images, to be shown over and over again,
until they took a life of their own, blurring the line between image and
reality.
·
The weapons also play an important role in engaging
an increasingly disengaged population, a source of concern for the regime,
since foreign and South Korean media has spread like wildfire, and millions of
people, including those in the North Korean upper class, are familiar with
South Korean media, and the viewing of this material interferes in the
relationship between state and citizen.
·
And, as this chart shows, as more North Koreans
migrate out of the country and resettle in the South, buoyed in part by what
they have seen through illicit media, North Korea’s insecurity has risen with
its loss of control, measured in its belligerent rhetoric and announcements.
·
So that’s my answer, to the question, why does
North Korea develop nuclear weapons, or appear to be doing so?
·
To take control of the country, as it lost control
in crucial areas like the food supply and media flows, and to respond to
disruptive media flows through the production of its own images, returning like
for like in the mass spectacle and digital realms.
IV. Describe specific benefits
for adopting the course of action set forth in your solution
·
So the concept of the hyperreal explains a great
deal about North Korea because reading the country through the lens of simulated
reality helps us to see that the state has had to become more provocative in
competition with other worlds
·
The hyperreal concept also points out the images
North Korea produces have replaced the reality they claim to represent.
·
Just to name an example, in 2016 alone, North
Korea announced a “successful” hydrogen bomb test although most governments
said the seismic readings indicated that wasn’t likely. The satellite it
launched in February could also be tumbling in orbit, but neither is that
failure mentioned.
·
So in the most recent round of provocations,
propaganda did surpass reality. Questionable claims have led to material
consequences and punishment, but as far as North Korean sovereignty is
concerned, the end justifies the means.
V.
State a call to action.
· So do
any of these explanations have implications for North Korea policy in South
Korea as well as the United States? (1)
· It may
or may not, but it does have implications for our own perception of the
country. (2)
· First, we
need to look beyond the announced threats and perhaps see the motivations of a
regime confined by its own need for self-preservation (3)
· Which
means, in turn, policymakers may be wiser to take a less alarmist approach to
North Korea’s proclamations. (4)
· Now certainly
if North Korea has full nuclear capability, or develops the ability to
miniaturize the weapons that can be placed on a long-range missile, it will
have created a monster of destruction that resembles the cinematic monster of
the hyperreal. (5)
· But whether
the weapons will be used or not, is not what worries me, nor should it be what
worries you. Because for a regime bent on survival, they might not be used at
all, because it’s already employing its most potent weapon of all, its highly
effective propaganda machine. (6)
