New York Times on north Korea: All the news that fits the doctrine (even if it has to be altered to do so)

By Stephen Gowans

At a confirmation hearing on March 26, Kim Tae-young, south Korea’s head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mused openly about a preventive strike on north Korea’s nuclear weapons.

The north reacted by calling Kim’s threat what it was –“little short of a declaration of war against the DPRK”.

The south, warned the north, “should bear in mind that once the more powerful preemptive strike of our own mode be launched, it will not merely plunge everything into flames but reduce it to ashes.”

Musing openly about a preventive strike is highly provocative – indeed it’s dangerous and inflammatory. But that’s not how the New York Times sees it – at least, when south Korea does it.

In a March 31, 2008 article, reporter Choe Sang-Hun seized on the north’s warning that it would meet a south Korean preventive strike by reducing the north to ashes, as an occasion to reinforce the doctrinal view of the north as a highly aggressive country that poses an existential threat to its neighbors.

“North Korea Threatens to Reduce South Korea to ‘Ashes’ at Slightest Provocation” the headline read.

A preventive strike is hardly a slight provocation, but Western reporting on north Korea conforms to a doctrine that cannot be altered by – indeed, is frequently at odds with – the facts.

The doctrine states: north Korea is aggressive; south Korea, like its ally the United States, is peace-loving, and is only concerned about protecting itself from dangerous rogue states.

The newspaper acknowledged that the north’s “reduce to ashes” statement was “a response to a statement by Kim Tae-young,” but altered the facts to sanitize the statement Kim actually made.

According to Sang-Hun, Kim only promised “that his military would strike suspected north Korean nuclear weapons sites if Pyongyang attempted to attack the south with atomic bombs.”

Since it would make little sense to strike nuclear weapons sites after they have been emptied of their atomic bombs, we can only conclude that Kim is a complete idiot, or didn’t say quite what Sang-Hum says he said. In fact, what Kim did say was they he would strike the sites before the north had a chance to use its atomic bombs. If ever there were a model for a crazed Strangelovian character, Kim is it.

Despite this, Sang-Hun turned reality on its head and wrote that “North Korea typically makes incendiary statements.”

It would be more apt to say the New York Times typically gets it wrong – and always in ways designed to make public opinion hostile to US foreign policy targets.