"Denuclearization" - A Graphic to Focus the Mind

ICAN logo

I've recommended an important article in the New York Review of Books.

I featured the logo of the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in my post. The post (and the article it recommended) was not about ICAN and the nuclear ban treaty -- at least not directly. But I used the image for three reasons.


Ad hominem

First: I have a strong objection to the image that did accompany the NYRB article. Oh, I think the graphic is very artistic, with its portrait of a deathly pale Kim Jong-un flanked by skulls. But I object to the use of it in connection with this article -- which is, after all, about multiple nuclear weapons states. The suggestion of death is appropriate to any discussion of nuclear weapons, but it is false to focus on the deadliness of a person instead of the deadliness of the nuclear weapons, themselves, and the nuclear weapons architecture and the roles people play in it.

Kim Jong-un by Siegried Woldhek in the New York Review of Books

This is especially true at a moment when people in the US -- that is, many of the very people who make up the readership of NYRB -- are struggling to develop a fact-based understanding of Korea, its northern and southern parts, and the role of the US in negotiations about conflict and nuclear weapons there. That's why I wrote A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea and Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?

(By the way: you could fault me for the many times I have used pejorative images of Donald Trump to suggest the danger he poses as the commander of US nuclear weapons. More to come on this subject . . . . )


"Denuclearization"

Second, one of the essential points of the NYRB article is that the term "denuclearization" is being used by both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, but the two mean different things when they use it.

Kim means, in essence, "we want a situation in which we're not threatened by your nuclear weapons and you're not threatened by ours."

Trump means "we want a situation in which you give up your nuclear weapons capability and we keep ours."

Anyone who is familiar with US nuclear doctrine to date understands why Trump thinks his version is the way things work.

Anyone who is familiar with the history of Korea understands why Kim is committed to his version.

And what results is a discourse. People get to dig into the issue, learn about it, try to understand it, and discuss it with others.

So: back to that graphic. I believe that the ICAN logo -- the image of a nuclear weapon being broken -- is an image that helps us focus on the core discourse: denuclearization.


A Proprietary Image?

It's debatable whether the logo of ICAN is fair game for the Korea Spring and denuclearization. ICAN is not a party to the talks, and the talks are not connected to the central project of ICAN, the nuclear ban treaty -- directly.

And yet . . . .

The discourse on denuclearization is impossible to separate from the discourse on the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which has now become impossible to separate from the discourse on the global nuclear ban treaty.

Just as "Nature abhors a vacuum," people innately sense and reject inequity. The longstanding de facto architecture of nuclear weapons -- "some've got 'em and others don't get to have 'em" -- withers a little more each time another person comes to see it and think about it and understand it and talk about it.

And right now the Trump-Kim Summit is shining a bright light on the discourse of denuclearization and that inequity.


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"Denuclearization": Let's Get Serious

Symbol of the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
(Why here?)

I commend to all the article by Jessica T. Matthews in the May 10, 2018, New York Review of Books, "Jaw-Jaw Better Than War-War."

The crux is found in these three sentences:

Former defense secretary William J. Perry, who has years of experience with arms control, including a failed effort in Pyongyang twenty years ago, believes that the very modest goal of a ban on further nuclear and missile tests and on the export of nuclear technology is all that can be hoped for. He argues that it would be impossible to verify even a freeze in the number of existing warheads, much less cuts. There is a stunning contrast between the modest goals that might be realistically achievable in North Korea and the stringent cuts and verification measures already in place and working under the Iran deal.

(The article is dated April 10 - before Trump de-certified the Iran Deal.)

Three thoughts on getting serious about denuclearization:

Serious analysis: It's important to advocate for broad goals; it's also important to participate in thinking about the details. How we as a species are going to "unlearn" nuclear weapons technology is a problem filled with devilish details.  (More to come on this subject . . . . )

Serious conversations: It's important to participate in conversations with all kinds of people. I'm particularly interested in the role of people like Matthews and Perry right now -- the kind of people who hold many views on security and international affairs that I don't agree with, but who do carry tremendous influence with respect to the task in front of us.

By the way, the expression "jaw jaw better than war war" -- a Harold Macmillan/Winston Churchill mashup -- expresses a kind of crude, patronizing attitude, the condescension of the warrior-reluctantly-turned-diplomat (there's an unspoken "I suppose" there . . . ) and perfectly encapsulates the idea that it's worth putting up with some attitude in order to get some dialog.

(More to come on this subject, too.)

Serious citizenship: Predictably, the daily ups and downs connected to the Korean Spring continue. There's an important role for ordinary citizens like you and me: to help the wide array of people we interact with day-to-day understand the larger arc of what's happening -- between the two parts of Korea, between the US and Korea, and with denuclearization broadly.


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Seven Days in May (2018)

Movie poster for Seven Days in May

I have been quietly thinking about and awaiting the events of "Korea Spring" - particularly the meeting between the leaders of South Korea and North Korea, and the meeting between the leaders of the US and North Korea.

"Korea Spring" has the potential to contribute substantially to global peace and denuclearization . . .

 . . . but only if sovereignty, diplomacy, and constitutionality are respected.

The news today that the Trump Administration has renounced the Iran Deal throws those values very much into question.

A few nights ago I watched a movie from the '60s: Seven Days in May.  It's about a US government effort to implement a peace treaty, and to eliminate nuclear weapons . . . and about an attempt to seize power by those who oppose those goals.

It is a worthy complement to the other film I recently mentioned here: Dr. Strangelove. (See Doomsday Machine: Same As It Ever Was . . . .)

Could something like this really ever happen? Well, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was concerned enough about who's taking orders from whom, and how our leaders interpret the US Constitution, that it held a hearing on these issues at the end of 2017:  "Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons," November 14, 2017.

Do you ever wonder who's running the show?


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The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret

The New Yorker, September 18, 2017

In light of the sobering news that John Bolton will become National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, I'm continuing with my analysis of an article about North Korea by zeroing in on some points that I hope people take away from that article.

Now more than ever we need lots and lots of people to participate in the process of reading, thinking, and speaking critically.

As in previous posts, I'll continue to use the up/down/level scoring approach as I discuss how this information was presented in "Letter from Pyongyang: On the Brink," by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker, September 18, 2017 (online: "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea").


Suspense: Will the US go to war?

I'm particularly interested in war powers, and whether "we, the People," have the ability to constrain the president. I mentioned in my post two days ago that I sat up and took notice when I read the part of "Letter from Pyongyang" about the North Korean official asking "who decides?" (article paragraph 25). I was also struck by the following paragraph, which appeared a few pages later:

Occasionally Pak misread something that was hard to discern from far away. He told me, "The United States is a divided country. It has no appetite for war." On some level, that was true -- the United States is a divided country, and it is tired of fighting wars in the Middle East, in South Asia -- but he would be wrong to assume that these facts would, with absolute assurance, prevent the Trump Administration from launching a strike on North Korea. (article paragraph 64)

That, my friends, is called "burying the lede." In my opinion, it is the most important paragraph in the entire article, and trumps (no pun intended) anything else written there, even (or especially) the most lurid anecdotes or rumors about North Korea.

Evan Osnos is confronting us with the fact that the US has lost control of war-making authority.

Not coincidentally, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on this very subject in November.

Nonetheless, I rated this paragraph "level," i.e. because it was focused on the US, I couldn't feel it impacting the notion that North Korea is "bad" one way or the other.

By the way, paragraph 5 of the article describes Osnos' plan for his reporting trip: "Before my arrival in North Korea, I spent time in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing; many people in those places, it turned out, are asking the same things about the United States." In this paragraph, "the same things" means "the kind of violence that their country so often threatens" and "[w]ere the threats serious, or mere posturing?" . . . and would those threats result in war. Unfortunately, the structure of the paragraph is so front-loaded with focus on North Korea doing "those things" that the reader is unlikely to give equal weight to the role of the US in all this, much less the heavy weight it (in my opinion) deserves. As a result, I rated that paragraph a "down," i.e. it tended to reinforce the impression that North Korea is "bad."

In paragraph 48, a school child asks Osnos, "Why is America trying to provoke a war with us? And what right do they have to block us from building our own nuclear weapon?" Osnos writes that "[t]his did not seem the occasion for rigorous analysis or debate. I mumbled some bromides about hoping that things would get better. The boy seemed unimpressed." I rated this paragraph a "down," because I think the main impression that the average reader gets is, "What is a ten-year-old doing thinking about this? They've been brainwashed! War-crazed North Koreans . . . . " (Personally, I think the paragraph is brilliantly . . . really "meta." To those who have ears to hear, Osnos is asking, "Well, what is the time and place to start analyzing this whole thing rigorously? Hello? Readers? Anyone awake out there?")


Discomfort: when war and weaponry are visible

One reason I rated many elements of the Osnos article a "down" is because they involved described talk of war and weaponry in North Korea. The irony, of course, is that this is liable to strike the average US reader as "war-obsessed." US people are in the curious situation of living in a state that is has the world's highest level of military spending, and is the world's largest weapons export, and is involved in armed conflicts all over the world . . .  and/but does a phenomenal job of keeping all of that out of sight, and out of the minds of the populace.

Paragraphs 65-78 of the article (down, down, down, down, level, level, level, down, down, down, down, down, down) describe frequent mentions of war and weaponry, and the apparent belief on the part of the North Koreans that they can endure the suffering of war. On this last point, Osnos challenges his host:

     But, to state the obvious, I said, risking a premature end to a friendly meal, a nuclear exchange would not be comparable.
    "A few thousand would survive," Pak said. "And the military would say, 'Who cares? As long as the United States is destroyed, then we are all starting from the same line again.'" He added, "A lot of people would die. But not everyone would die." (article paragraphs 77-78)

"A lot of people would die. But not everyone would die." I think that sounds to the average reader like, "The North Koreans are crazy. They've been brainwashed into thinking they can survive a nuclear war."

This might be an opportune moment to pause and look at a graphic of global nuclear weapons holdings:

So many exist, ready to be used . . . .
The world's nuclear weapon count (August, 2014):
16,400
(Source: peaceandplanet.org)

So: who's crazy? The people thinking about how many people will survive nuclear war? Or the people living in the country with 7,000+ nuclear warheads (2014 total) who never even think about it?


Regret: things could've been different

Osnos does a good job of providing the recent diplomatic history. I just wish it weren't buried so deep in the article.

Paragraph 82 gives an account of Kim Jong Un's Father, Kim Jong Il, as someone who came close to "forging peace with the United States" c. 2000. (Four "ups" in a single paragraph.)

Paragraph 83 describes how the US dropped the ball as the Clinton Administration ended and the Bush Administration began. (I bet US readers gloss over the significance of this: level.)

Paragraph 84 reminds us of Bush's inclusion of North Korea in an "axis of evil." (Level, at best. The word "evil" tends to poison the well of this particular paragraph.)


Which brings us back to John Bolton. (See the "Beyond the Axis of Evil" speech. Given the sudden turn Bolton's appointment represents, it is now more than ever incumbent on every US citizen to take personal responsibility for a truth-based approach to understanding the US, understanding North Korea, and understanding the US-North Korea situation.

Your own close reading of the Osnos article is a good place to start.


(To be continued.)


Additional posts in this series:

A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea.

North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?


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Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?

I want to write in more detail about the article I talked about in yesterday's post -- When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer" -- but I realized that first I should say something about the cover of the issue of The New Yorker in which it appeared.

I wrote two days ago about how important images are -- North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?. The article from the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars that I referenced there directed our attention to how caricatures may cross the line from commentary on an individual to ethnic stereotype. Consider this example:

"Let's see -- my old man said the top button is to launch and the
bottom button is to cancel -- or is it the other way around?"
Kim Jong Il caricatured by Don Wright, Palm Beach Post
c. 1994

Commenting on the cartoon, scholar Robert Perkinson says, "[T]he cartoon not only ridicules North Korea's likely new president Kim Jong Il by exaggerating both his lack of expertise and his perceived menace to the West, but also employs anti-Asian racial stereotypes." (Introduction to "Notes from the Field: The Korean Nuclear Crisis.)

Having been alerted by Perkinson, I notice several things about this cartoon:

* Kim's feet don't reach the ground. (They barely reach beyond the edge of his chair.) This suggests:

- the physical fact that Kim Jung Il was relatively short (5' 3")
- short stature as a metaphor for youth, in turn a metaphor for inexperience and/or lack of expertise
- infantilization of Asians as a racial stereotype

* Kim has big glasses and barely visible eyes, i.e. the representation is in no way realistic. Does this reflect:

- reliance upon a long-standing and innocent cartooning convention?
- reliance upon a long-standing and anti-Asian racist cartooning convention?

* Kim can't keep straight the simplest instructions concerning this mechanism. Is this:

- a dig at his inexperience and/or lack of expertise?
- an anti-Asian racist stereotype, suggesting Asians are too simple to understand machines?

I know, it's hard work; we've been looking at images like this for so long without thinking about these questions.

The New Yorker cover for September 18, 2017 is interesting.

The New Yorker, September 18, 2017

It is by Eric Drooker and is entitled "Warhead."

What I noticed about this image is that it puts Kim Jong Un on a par with Donald Trump. After months of graphics that made use of what had become a true cultural meme -- Trump's orange mop of hair -- we were now seeing an image saying to us, in effect, "There's another leader that you know just by looking at his hair!" (and, possibly, "Compare to Trump - similar? different? . . . . ")

Using the up/down/level scoring approach that I talked about in yesterday's post, I would give this a "level." If all it were suggesting was "Kim is scary" (i.e. the message implied by the image's title, "Warhead"), then I would rate it "down." But in my opinion the image makes people think.

I'm confirmed in my judgement by comparing it with an earlier New Yorker cover depicting Kim:

The New Yorker, January 18, 2016

It is by Anita Kunz and is entitled "New Toys."

Here the questions raised by the Don Wright cartoon come to mind. It seems perfectly legitimate to provide commentary that suggests that a leader lacks the maturity to handle his or her country's military and weapons responsibly. However, I believe it also involves an anti-Asian racial stereotype when an Asian leader is shown as a baby playing with his toys. (Why isn't he shown side-by-side with his US counterpart, also depicted as a child?)

So: between January, 2016, and September, 2017, the story the public has gotten from The New Yorker has progressed from "down" to "level."

At least, if you can judge a nuclear confrontation by its cover . . . .


More:

The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret

"Denuclearization" - A Graphic to Focus the Mind


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When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

The New Yorker, September 18, 2017

In the past several days, I have started the process of examining some specific examples of recent writing by others about the US, about North Korea, and about the US-North Korea situation, and trying to highlight the ways in which certain aspects of writing play a role in forming the impression that might be formed by readers.  I've started specifically with an article that appeared in The New Yorker: "Letter from Pyongyang: On the Brink," by Evan Osnos, September 18, 2017 issue; online: "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea".

Here is now I began:

A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea.

North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

Today, I want to get into the body of the Osnos article itself.

First, a disclosure. I was delighted with this article when I first saw it. Back in September, 2017, when it first came out, I was involved in helping prepare for a conference to be held at Harvard in November about presidential first use of nuclear weapons (see video summary and full text), and I immediately saw a connection. Osnos quotes Ri Yong Pil, "a Foreign Ministry official in his mid-fifties, who is the vice-president of the Institute for American Studies":

After several more toasts, Ri loosened his tie and shed his jacket. He had some questions. "In your system, what is the power of the President to launch a war?" he asked. "Does the Congress have the power to decide?" ("Letter from Pyongyang," paragraph 25)

No question about it, I was gleeful to see the very question upon which the conference was to focus being raised by people in North Korea, and reported in this prominent article!

Going back now and studying the article more closely, I realized that my particular point of view and special concerns meant that my first reading didn't necessarily have much in common with the many other people who read it. For sure, paragraph 25 was probably not the most memorable paragraph for the average reader. I even wonder whether the average reader paid very much attention to paragraph 25 at all . . . .

This time, as I read through the article, I tried to notice how the words struck me, and tried to think and feel like an average US reader. We've all heard a lot about how "bad" North Korea is -- all of us carry that with us -- so I applied a simple test: I went through the article word by word and rated each paragraph (or fragment of a paragraph) as follows.

* "down" --  if it tended to reinforce the impression that North Korea is "bad";

* "up" --  if it tended to counterbalance or question the idea that North Korea is "bad";

* "level" --  if I couldn't feel it impacting the notion that North Korea is "bad" one way or the other.

I know, I know - completely subjective and arbitrary.  But that's what all of us have to work with when we read -- received ideas, notions, and impressions, and feelings about how the words strike us. (Yes, I'll admit it: some of us . . . some of the time . . . may also read with a degree of steely logic and layered analysis . . . . Anyway, back to the real world . . . . )

Here are some examples of "up," "down," and "level" in "Letter from Pyongyang"

The article begins with a section head:

I. THE MADMAN THEORY

Now, I personally know the words "madman theory" to be associated with US nuclear doctrine. So my initial impression was, "Ah, good, Osnos is going to place the blame where it belongs, with the US!" This would seem to rate an "up" rating, right? It tends to counterbalance or question the idea that North Korea is "bad."

But I made a guess about the average reader. I guessed that the average reader wouldn't immediately think of US nuclear doctrine, but would think "madman" refers to the North Koreans, specifically the North Korean leader.

I also thought: "Uh-oh. Right off the bat, that section title sets a tone for what follows, and tends to swamp the mood of the piece, even though it's just a few words."  (Many paragraphs later, Osnos indeed associates the "madman theory" with US nuclear doctrine -- but by then the damage has been done, in my opinion.)

(Yes, some words get more weight than others. Similar to the way that a big colorful picture can outweigh a thousand words.)

On the other hand, I noticed that every time Osnos used a non-threatening descriptor for a North Korean person, it tended to feel like he was lifting some of the stigma on North Korea overall. I jotted down words like . . .

genial
placid
gregarious
confident
pragmatic
well-informed
technical
single-minded
long-term
modern

Certain lifestyle words also seemed positive . . .

MacBook
jet
stylish wife

All of these tended to contribute an "up" feeling, in my opinion.

There was a lot in the article that I considered "level." There were multiple instances in which I thought, "If a reader is well-informed and paying close attention, they will see that this paragraph is an indictment of the US., and puts North Korea in a more positive light than usual. But what feeling will the average reader get from this paragraph? I fear that at best it will be like water off their back."

For example, here's a paragraph in which Osnos reports on his escorts' sincere questions about what is likely to happen:

For Pak and other analysts in North Korea, the more important question about the United States extends beyond Trump. "Is the American public ready for war?" he asked. "Does the Congress want a war? Does the American military want a war? Because, if they want a war, then we must prepare for that." ("Letter from Pyongyang," paragraph 16)

Personally, I tended to view this as another extremely significant paragraph. "That's the crux of the Constitutional problem we're up against -- and they get it!" Score an "up," right?

However, I tried to be honest with myself, and I thought I had to admit that the average US reader would find this anecdote complicated and not terribly revealing (unless possibly reinforcing an impression that North Korea is war-obsessed) . . . . in other words, at best, "level."

The upshot was that when I made a tally, I found the "downs" far outnumbered the "ups" and the "levels":

"up" -- 35
"down" -- 101
"level" -- 38

Again, I know - it's not terribly precise. But I think it points to a direction that's worth looking at more.

More: The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret


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North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

Many people in the US are looking at North Korea, thinking, "We don't really know enough . . . I want more information."

That's important.

. . . but/and . . .

I'm beginning to realize it's even more important that we ask, "Who am I? How is that I get to do the observing? Do I imagine North Korea is obliged to prove something to me?"

These questions go to the head of what I have described as A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea.


Standing

I attended a screening of a film at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) two days ago: The Thoughts That Once We Had by Thom Andersen.

Thoughts is a film about film. I'm guessing most people who see it think of it as being about the art of film (" . . . directors from Griffith to Godard"). But it's really about philosophy and phenomenology. Which means it's also about politics.

There's a substantial section of the film that is about war: the siege of Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Vietnam -- and North Korea.

I was so startled by the appearance of this extremely topical North Korea section that I barely had time to grab my pen and scribble down the narration as best I could: " . . . North Korea 1950-1953 . . . The US Air Force destroyed every town and city in North Korea . . . 600,000 tons of bombs . . . 2 million civilians . . . no repentance . . . not even acknowledgement . . . . "

I thought: "Serendipitous. Important context for what's happening right now. What if we routinely got reminders of this information? What if it just popped up at random times, as it seemed to do for me in this film?"

This snippet of film gives important context for our standing as observers of North Korea.

Do we need to know where we stand?


Pictures and Words

I have set out to look at a recent article about North Korea ("Letter from Pyongyang: On the Brink," by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker, September 18, 2017; online: "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea") and try to understand how it impacts understanding about North Korea, and about the US-North Korea situation.

One of the first things that occurred to me is that the impact of a few images is likely to swamp the impact of thousands of words. There are several photographs by Max Pinckers accompanying "Letter from Pyongyang: On the Brink," and I think it's worth considering them even before the article's text.

(Perhaps I'm just starting here for convenience. And yet . . . . Consider the way generations of people have read The New Yorker: first flipping through the entire issue looking at the cartoons (and, now, other images), and then putting the magazine out on the coffee table (yes, or . . . ), and only later (possibly) reading an article or two.)

Among Pinckers' photographs, I found the one below particularly full of information:

North Korean schoolchildren photographed by Max Pinckers for The New Yorker

The image was displayed as a 2-page spread in the print edition. I wondered: what happens when someone looks at this image? How might it impact their understanding about North Korea, and about the US-North Korea situation?

The overall effect of the image seemed to me to be scary.

I tried to break it down. Some of the things I noticed in myself as I looked at the photograph:

Lighting/mood: glare, garish ... weird pink partition glass ... amber color

Composition: regimented ... is it a language lab?

Costume: uniforms ... red kerchiefs covering shoulders

Faces: overall feeling is troubling

I realized that the ephemeral aspects of the image had as much impact on me as the actual content. In other words, the feeling of the picture as much as the substance.

I went back and looked at each of the faces in turn: what do I see there? Looking left to right, front to back, at the six children's faces, I sensed: leery/looking askance; sheepish/guilty; imploring; dull/affectless; content/unconcerned; trying to be alert.

People would be justified in thinking they can tell something from the expressions on these children's faces: faces communicate -- across cultures, pretty consistently. And yet: do these six expressions really signify something? Beyond, that is, what these six individuals were feeling on that particular day, in that particular situation? (How different is this than any other group of schoolkids of this age?)

The caption in the print edition reads, "Students at the Pyongyang Orphans' Secondary School, which is housed in a new brick-and-steel complex. In a class of ten-and-eleven-year-olds, one boy asked, 'Why is America trying to provoke a war with us?'" [More on that question in a separate blog post.])

You can read the photographer's own take on this image here: "A Photographer’s Search for Cracks in North Korea’s Propaganda Machine."

When I got done with these observations, I wondered: does a photograph such as this get us closer to the truth?

Of course, this is just one picture.

Still, considering the stakes -- not to mention the history -- what obligation do we have to give everyone concerned the best possible shot at approaching the truth?


The Power to Look

We aren't going to stop looking at North Korea, nor should we. But will we slow down, even for a moment, and do our looking with a level of intentionality and self-awareness appropriate to the subject?

I have recently been watching a series of programs filmed by Louis Malle, Phantom India. From the very outset, Malle says that he and his team realized they were in an inequitable position vis-a-vis the people they were filming: they came to India, looked at people, took their images, and went do what they wished with them. It was as if, he says, they were thieves.

We are in a moment when many images and many words will be taken from North Korea and consumed by people in the US. Much of this will happen in the context of inequities from the past that will not be immediately reversed (if, indeed, they ever are), and we need to take in more, not less, information.  However, at a minimum, let us to commit to a process wherein we slow down and think as we are doing it.


More:

Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?

When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret


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A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea

cover, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
January - June 2000

I recently began doing something I wish I'd done forty years ago when I was a college student: reading and thinking about the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (now Critical Asian Studies) - the publication of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars.

You can read this publication free online:

Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (1968-2000)
Critical Asian Studies (2001 onward)

I plan to talk in a more general way about this important publication in a future post. Here I will begin with a relevant example of its important work.

In a 1994 issue of the Bulletin, there is a group of articles about North Korea and nuclear weapons: "Notes from the Field: The Korean Nuclear Crisis." The articles are:

* Robert Perkinson - "Introduction"

* Bruce Cummings - "Old and New Korean Wars"

* Minn Chung - "'Seoul Will Become a Sea of Fire . . .'"

* Reunification Committee of National Council of Churches in Korea - "Statement on Peace and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula"

* Catherine B. Wrenn - "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Retrospect: The Case of North Korea"

* Tom Clements - "Nuclear-Free Korean Peninsula: Visit of "MV Greenpeace" Spotlights South Korean Nukes"

* Minn Chung - "Chronology of Crisis: Important Developments for Peace, Reconciliation, and Denuclearization in Korea"

(You can read all these articles in pdf form In the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Volume 26 (No. 1 and 2).)

Robert Perkinson's introductory article calls our attention to the need to read critically -- in general, and as we comment on places and cultures that are not our own, and especially in charged contexts like the relationship between the United States and North Korea.

I jotted down some words from Robert Perkinson's article:

Western media spin . . .

monolithic ideological line  . . .

portraying . . .

condemning . . .

demonizing . . .

target the North Korean people as well . . .

overt racism . . .

mocking . . .

demeaning anecdotes . . .

"hysteria" . . .

epithets . . .

jingoistic . .

anti-Asian racial stereotypes . . .

denigrating . . . 

All of these are examples of behaviors that we who write about countries and cultures not our own must be on guard against. At a minimum, our unending effort to produce "colorful writing" -- stuff that people actually feel compelled to read -- is filled with the risk of leading readers by the nose instead of giving them the material to think for themselves. At a deeper level, the power we wield as observers and interpreters and writers generally needs much, much, much more acknowledgement, not to mention careful, measured, respectful, peaceful application.

I decided it would be valuable to spend some time examining how my own writing might be improved by paying attention to these behaviors.

I also decided to examine some specific examples of recent writing (by others) about the US, about North Korea, and about the US-North Korea situation, and try to highlight the ways in which these (and other) behaviors play a role in forming the impression that might be formed by readers.

The good news is that much is being written and shared today about North Korea.

The bad news is that we -- readers, writers, all of us -- have a lot of unexamined biases.

Let the critical reading begin . . . . 


Follow-up posts:

North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?

The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret


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Trump and Kim and Nuclear Brinksmanship: Too Close for Comfort

WHAT IF?
"For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Bay Area
residents are being forced to confront the unthinkable:
the possibility of a nuclear attack on our own soil."
(The Mercury News, August 10, 2017)
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A number of things will need to be said to clarify the context of the Trump-Kim Summit.

I think the most important is: US people have woken up to the fact that "business as usual" (i.e. US nuclear deterrence doctrine) means that they are targets . . . and they've also woken up to the fact that a nuclear strike is not something anyone "survives."

Donald Trump cannot come back from Korea and say, "Too bad, we couldn't agree, we're going to pursue other alternatives."

There are no "other alternatives" to ending the risk of nuclear weapons use.

I knew something had changed when more and more members of Congress agreed to co-sponsor Ted Lieu's HR.669 "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017" - including 19 from California alone!

I knew something had changed when I saw the picture above on the front page of our Bay Area paper last summer.

I knew something had changed when Hawaii had a missile alert and suddenly everyone in the US knows someone who has been scared to death by nuclear weapons.

I knew something had changed when thousands of people started to watch this video from the International Committee on the Red Cross (ICRC):

"From the 1st second, to 70 years on: here’s what could happen
to you and your city if a nuclear bomb is dropped. #nuclearban"
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For years, experts in the medical field, such as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), have been urging us to face the facts: a nuclear strike is not something you "survive."

For instance, here's a video from the 1980s ("The Last Epidemic"), with specifics about the impossibility of providing medical care to all of the people harmed if San Francisco were struck by a nuclear weapon:

I guess now people in the US have begun to connect that reality to their own lives.

The degree to which things have changed struck me this morning when I happened to be reading an old Joan Didion essay about Joan Baez.

When she was at Palo Alto High School and refused to leave the building during a bomb drill, she was not motivated by theory; she did it because "it was the practical thing to do, I mean it seemed to me this drill was impractical, all these people thinking they could get into some kind of little shelter and be saved with canned water." ("Where the Kissing Never Stops," (1967), in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Picador edition, p. 83))

People have become a lot more practical in the past year. No one is talking about shelters. People are talking about getting rid of nuclear weapons.


Related posts

What Would a Nuclear Weapon Do to Chicago? (Go ahead, guess . . . )

Obscene Geometry: The Hard Facts about Death and Injury from Nuclear Weapons

US Mayors "Get It": The Nuclear Threat Must Be Stopped


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Yes, Trump to North Korea ... AND ... #restrictnukes

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it that we keep working
to restrict the ability of #DonaldTrump to use #nuclearweapons?
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Yes, Donald Trump says he will go to meet with North Korea Leader Kim Jung-un by May.

. . . AND . . .

It still remains URGENT that formal steps succeed in restricting the ability of the US president to carry out a first strike with nuclear weapons.

As of today, there are 80 House members and 14 senators supporting restrictions on the ability of the US president to unilaterally call a nuclear first strike:

Co-sponsors of  HR.669 "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017" (plus bill sponsor Rep. Ted Lieu)

Co-sponsors of S.200 "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017" (plus bill sponsor Sen. Ed Markey)

Are your representative and senators supporting this bill?

This is not the end of the struggle to #restrictnukes. It's just the beginning . . . .


Related:

Full transcript of conference -- "Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons" -- from Public Books.

Nuclear Weapons: People Power Over Trump Power


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