Vicarious Traumas: Television and Public Opinion in Japan's North Korea Policy

Abstract

Critiques often dubious cheerleading of the US war against Iraq have become familiar elements of recent public discourse. However, there have not been many similar analyses of media representations of North Korea. Considering how such representations can shape perceptions of North Korea among the public, academics and policy makers, and how difficult it has been to obtain accurate information on North Korea, this relative paucity is surprising. I address this lacuna by analyzing the role of the Japanese media, particularly television, in generating public perceptions of North Korea. While I focus on Japanese television, several of the implications of the analysis are applicable to media and public opinion in other countries. The caveat is that media coverage of North Korea in Japan has maintained near-saturation levels for the past four to five years, particularly since the build-up to the first Kim Jong U/Koizumi Junichiro Pyongyang summit on September 17, 2002 (hereafter 9/17), at which Kim first acknowledged that North Korea had abducted Japanese nationals in the past. In relative terms, media coverage of North Korea in countries other than Japan and South Korea has been sporadic and thin, in both quantity and quality. There are several works in English on the Japanese media; however, these have often converged around the role of the media in domestic politics or USJapan relations.2 Additionally, the North Korea-Japan binary has often