[Moon-dæg] Two Takes on North Korea, Part 3

Recap & Introduction
The Korea Herald
The Chosun Ilbo
The JoongAng Daily
Wrap Up
Closing

{Smoke rises from Yeonpyeong Island. Image from The Korea Herald.}

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Recap & Introduction

Today’s entry takes a look at the Korean coverage of the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong, a maritime skirmish between North and South Korea that happened on 23 November 2010.

In last week’s overview of the North American coverage of this event, all of the news outlets looked at included fairly extensive analysis of their reports. There were points raised about how the incident fit in with the impending ascension to power of Kim Jong Il’s son Kim Jong Un, and the incident also offered the chance to mention North Korea’s continuing nuclear experimentation.

Let’s see if coverage in South Korea is any different.

The three news outlets featured (The Korea Herald, The Chosun Ilbo, and The Joongang Daily) are all considered major South Korean papers, and each has a distribution of at least 1.96 million.

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The Korea Herald

The article from The Korea Herald wastes no time getting to the facts. It begins with a quick outline of the incident, and moves onto more facts and reports from relevant sources. However, this article does talk about how tensions were high since the sinking of the Cheonan on 26 March 2010, and states that a “Seoul-led multi-national investigation team” had since concluded that North Korea was entirely responsible for the sinking of the corvette.

There are also passages like those about the shelling happening after South Korea’s exercises were finished, and that South Korean experts on North Korea expected North Korea to extend the olive branch rather than the bayonet to help stabilize themselves on the eve of power passing from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un. Crowning these statements, though, is a single paragraph:

"Foreign press quickly reported the attack as a major news, producing a flurry of interpretations about the motive of North Korea. Reuters quoted an expert as saying that the attack is "unbelievable.""

Interestingly, South Korean media was much slower to produce it’s own interpretations of the event.

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The Chosun Ilbo

The article from the The Chosun Ilbo is originally in Korean, and the translation offered by Microsoft’s translation service is decent, but not entirely clear.

Nonetheless, from the translation it's plain that the attack was unsuspected. The article also notes that North Korea’s actions put it squarely in the wrong in the eyes of the UN, and even suggests that the armistice between the two Koreas has been broken.

On the matter of war re-igniting between the two nations, though, the article is apparently quiet.

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The JoongAng Daily

Just like The Korea Herald article, this one from the The JoongAng Daily starts with a summary of events. Curiously, this includes the number of shots fired by North Korea, and the casualties and wounded on the South Korean side - both military and civilian.

Also interesting, is that this article includes the relation of a local who fled her home when the shelling shattered her windows.

The article also goes the most in depth of the three on the question of war reigniting. It notes that Joint Chiefs of Staff set the country to the highest level of military alertness. Even the Defence Minister, Kim Tae-Young, is brought into it as he is reported as answering a question about war breaking out with: “Didn’t it start already? We must stop it from expanding.”

The article winds down with a myriad of voices. These run from the South Korean Democratic Party and their call for co-operation with the ruling Grand National Party, to Japan on the tension between the nations, to China’s call for caution, and to Reuters’ reporting on the attack causing the Hong Kong stock exchange to suffer significant losses. But, going the furthest to prove its uniqueness among these three articles is the article's final paragraph.

In this paragraph it is stated that 11 days before the attack on Yeonpyeong, North Korea had been showing an American nuclear scientist its uranium enrichment facilities.

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Wrap Up

All in all, then, the local reporting on the incident offers quite a different take on the Bombardment of Yeonpyeong. Rather than the hunt for a motive and speculation on said motive found in North American coverage, there’s a much greater emphasis on facts. Any kind of elaboration on them is left entirely up to the reader.

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Closing

Check back here next week for Part 4 of this series, an analysis of the difference between these reporting styles and some reasons and theories for that difference.

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