South Korea Dying in the Heat: Reading the North Korean Media Machine
The focus points of the North Korean media need to be kept in mind | Image: Destination Pyongyang
South Korea Dying in the Heat: Reading the North Korean Media Machine
by Christopher Green
A small news item that appeared in the North Korean media last weekend:
“Harm caused by heatwave in south Chosun”
(Pyongyang, August 11, Chosun Central News Agency)
In south Chosun a lot of harm has been caused by an ongoing heatwave, according to south Chosun broadcaster《CBS》on the 9th.
A number of people have died in the extreme heat, and more than 660 people have suffered heatstroke.
In addition, 780,600 pigs, chickens and ducks have died on farms.
On the 9th, the temperature of a railroad in North Gyeongsang Province topped 55℃, the broadcast explained.
While deaths should of course be reported, that is not the point here. Rather, such a story has a different rationale, which is to encourage the popular perception in North Korea that damage due to the forces of nature is unavoidable, and that in this regard North Korea’s own weather-related difficulties (and by extension its food security concerns) are an inevitable outcome of God’s machinations.
Further examples of this media angle could be found on KCNA today, Korean Liberation Day. The day’s limited crop of stories included one about two deaths in excessive heat in Japan, another on hardships caused by forest fires in the United States, one more on an earthquake in Indonesia, and one on flood damage in Russia. This studied fascination with weather-related reporting represents just one of the tools in the armory of North Korea’s supremely “on-message” media machine. A machine whose main weakness, it appears, is an almost limitless incompetence with Photoshop.
An image provided by KCNA to Associated Press (AP) in July 2011. AP later issued a kill notice after the photo was identified as having been doctored | Image: KCNA and Associated Press
Source: “Harm caused by heatwave in south Chosun″ [남조선에서 무더위로 피해 발생], KCNA, August 11, 2013. Translation by Christopher Green.
