The Impact of Media Coverage on Ethnic Conflict Between Japanese and Koreans in Japan

Abstract

A study examines how the issues aggravating tensions in North Korea-Japan relations in the 1990s and early 2000s, such as North Korea`s nuclear weapons program, North Korea`s long range missile threat, North Korean spy ships, and North Korea`s kidnapping of Japanese citizens, resulted in conflict between Japanese and Koreans in Japan. By analyzing the coverage of the issues by three major Japanese newspapers Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Asahi Daily News this study finds that Japanese attacks against Koreans in Japan were affected by the information that the Japanese public received about the issues from the media. The more critical the issue was to national security, and the less satisfactory were the responses of the government to the issue, the more likely were Japanese to attack Koreans in Japan to express their grievances against North Korea and the Japanese government`s reactions to the issues. The findings of this study suggest that we can fully explain ethnic conflict when we comprehensively examine the overall process of how the majority perceives the interactions between political actors involved in an incident and how they take advantage of existing ethnic tensions as a way of expressing their grievances against them, rather than attempting to explain ethnic conflict by deep –rooted attitudes about ethnic differences between the majority and the minority populations and the political or social discrimination that the minority has received in the host country.