Dr Se-Woong Koo was the keynote speaker at the ASAA鈥檚 25th Biennial Conference held at Curtin University from 1 to 4 July 2024. This post is a shorter version of the keynote speech given at the conference.
On June 12, 2018, North Korea and the United States held their historic first-ever summit, bringing the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the then-US president Donald Trump together in Singapore. Concluding it was a press conference where Trump pledged to halt joint military exercises between the US and South Korea as a peaceful gesture toward Pyongyang.
Western media outlets were nearly unanimous in condemning the meeting, out of the rationale that it only legitimized North Korea on the international stage and undermined America鈥檚 national security and that of its allies, all on account of 鈥渟urprise鈥� allegedly felt in the region.
鈥淏oth the South Korean government and US forces in the region appear to have been taken by surprise,鈥� the Guardian. 鈥淧entagon and Seoul surprised by Trump pledge to halt military exercises,鈥� the New York Times. 鈥淭rump鈥檚 pledge to stop 鈥榩rovocative鈥� military exercises provokes alarm and confusion in Seoul,鈥� CNN. The American public radio broadcaster : 鈥淎nd the South Koreans said they鈥檙e still trying to figure out what it all means. So they clearly were surprised as well.鈥�
Those in the know saw how facetious this media outcry was. What the office of the South Korean president actually said was that it needed to 鈥渇ind out the precise meaning or intentions鈥� of Trump鈥檚 pledge, to go by usually more reliable and fact-driven reporting by the . The South Korean government even added that they were willing to 鈥渆xplore various measures to help the talks move forward more smoothly.鈥�
Indeed, real experts on inter-Korean politics would have known that the then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in, in power from 2017 to 2022, wouldn鈥檛 have been surprised or concerned, for he pursued a policy that went against the conventional hardline approach toward North Korea. Moon, a center-leftist, came to power promising to diffuse tension. He nudged Trump toward meeting with Kim. included pledges on 鈥渆stablishing peace on the Korean Peninsula鈥� in conjunction with North Korea鈥檚 denuclearization as well as 鈥減reventing accidental confrontation鈥� and 鈥渞elaxing military tension鈥�. In April 2018, two months before the US-North Korean summit in Singapore, Moon met separately with Kim and signed an agreement that on 鈥渃easing various military exercises aimed at each other.鈥�
That such facts were lost on many Western journalists speaks to how much North Korea reporting and by extension global news making is governed by biases and ignorance. Trump鈥檚 announcement of suspending military drills did not alarm Seoul; it only exposed Western media鈥檚 underlying assumptions about the world as they saw to be right.
The period we are living through is often called the 鈥淎sia Century鈥�, and the rise of Asia in recent decades as a political, cultural and economic force to be reckoned with is undeniable; and yet, judging by Western news coverage of the region in recent years, much has yet to improve when it comes to how this region is represented to an international audience. Sadly, Asia remains profoundly distorted in the dominant Western imagination.
The caricatures of North Korea as propagated by Western media are all too well-known: embodied in the figure of Kim Jong-un鈥檚 wife ( obtained despite international sanctions and thus signaling corruption of an authoritarian regime); as well as in the figure of Kim himself (and that of his late father, Kim Jong-il) as comic fodder sporting funny hair and a paunch, laughable even in his most despicable deed such as for disloyalty. Although that last story proved to be , Western media nonetheless saw no quandary in printing, broadcasting and amplifying it before verifying it.
Even when Western journalists attempt serious reporting on North Korea, they sometimes tell outright lies. In November 2018 The New York Times鈥� Pulitzer-winning correspondent David E. Sanger that North Korea was hiding missile bases from the US. This was just six months after the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, and the Times鈥� clear intention was to discredit the attempt at rapprochement and Trump himself. Yet neither Sanger nor his editors at The Times seemed to have given much thought to the fact that 鈥攖hree months before the Singapore summit. Adding salt to the wound, the South Korean government issued a statement that it had already known about these missile bases for two years.
Under much criticism and pressure, the Times tweeted that it still stood by the piece and did not retract it. But it offered no explanation as to how it met their standards.
Supposing North Korea is difficult to access and therefore hard to report on correctly, one must question why Western journalists are not better when the object of their investigation is South Korea, a country nowhere near as inaccessible as its northern neighbor. Apart from being obsessed with beauty, technology and cultural consumption that essentializes the country as bizarre and irrational in contrast to the putative West, the latter鈥檚 media cannot stop its reliance on Confucianism by way of 鈥榚xplaining鈥� how and why Koreans do the things that they do.
That was the case when an Asiana Airlines plane crash landed at San Francisco Airport in 2013, prompting that the culture of 鈥楥onfucian鈥� hierarchy or was to blame. In April 2014 a ferry sank off the southwest coast, claiming the lives of more than two hundred people, many of them high school students. The fact that the crew instructed the passengers to stay put and that many of the latter listened was attributed by no small number of outlets, again, to a purportedly .
My current place of residence is Germany, which went through a series of lockdowns at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, the year that the virus forced many Western countries to shut down public life in order to curb the rising infection figures, German media allocated considerable resources to covering East Asia, not only as a place of the virus鈥檚 presumed origin, but also an example of how transmission of the virus could be contained while minimizing the impact on society. During this time I was asked by several German friends and acquaintances about a mysterious South Korean smartphone app that tracks everyone’s movement real-time for the government to see. I was in South Korea a few times during this time but never came across such an invention, but they insisted every South Korean had consented to real-time tracking around the clock, because how else could the country be so successful in dealing with the pandemic?
I pored over German-language news and realized where the misunderstanding came from: in South Korea, inbound travelers and those who were suspected of having contracted the virus had to go into a two-week home quarantine and download a live location tracking app to ensure compliance. In Germany, the government encouraged citizens to download an unrelated 鈥淐orona-Warn-App鈥� that remained active on the phone at all times; it alerted the user about possible contact with an infected person, without betraying the user鈥檚 personal data to any authority.
In German media鈥檚 imagination of South Korea鈥檚 Covid policy, the South Korean app was seen as having the ever-present capacity of the German counterpart, but simultaneously exacting much greater violation of personal privacy under limitless state surveillance. Only that, coupled with the ostensibly obedient 鈥楥onfucian鈥� nature of Asians before authority, could explain South Korea鈥檚 epidemiological successes.
Der Spiegel, the respected Germany weekly magazine, , falsely assuming that the 鈥榓pp鈥� be the all-seeing eye of the state. And the influential newspaper S眉ddeutsche Zeitung 鈥� after the German title of Aldous Huxley鈥檚 dystopian novel Brave New World 鈥� and saw South Korea鈥檚 handling of the virus as an example of Asian countries that 鈥渨ant to know not only where a citizen鈥檚 smartphone is, but also what is saved on it.鈥� And by those 鈥渟ome countries鈥� German media were of course referring to China as the ultimate Asian nation for draconian social and political control, and South Korea being only a milder case.
So glaring was the bias of German media to downplay how Asia seemed to be better off than Europe in combating the Covid virus that the S眉ddeutsche Zeitung鈥檚 own Beijing correspondent Lea Deuber warned in titled 鈥淲hat we can learn from Asia鈥� against seeing elements of Asia鈥檚 covid strategies, particularly the widespread use of masks, as a 鈥淪ymbol asiatischer Gehorsamkeit鈥� or 鈥渟ymbol of Asian submissiveness鈥�. She identified 鈥渋gnorance鈥� and 鈥渞acism鈥� as underlying causes of Germany鈥檚 dismissive reporting on Covid in Asia, and accused Europeans of 鈥渓ooking at the Asian situation鈥� with 鈥渒nee-jerk arrogance鈥�.
My work as a journalist in South Korea for five years prior to the pandemic brought me into contact with many Western reporters covering Asia. While I don鈥檛 agree with Deuber that racism was a factor behind all the patronizing coverage of South Korea鈥檚 handling of the pandemic, I cannot dismiss the ignorance and superiority complex she points to. So severe was the objection to lockdowns from certain circles within Germany that the successes of other nations without lockdowns had to be falsely portrayed and dismissed in order to justify to the public what the German government was doing. The sense of conviction within the German media establishment was palpable: how could Asians possibly do it better than we are, if there is not some hidden trade off in what they are doing?
It speaks to the heart of the current problem of how Asia is imagined by Western media, to the region鈥檚 detriment: many Western journalists, who seldom have the capacity to see the continent as it truly is, are hardly the objective instruments of factual reporting as they see themselves to be.
Describing the causes of the great 1943 Bengal famine under the British Raj, Janam Mukherjee, historian of modern Bengal, , 鈥淪ome MP who has no colonial experience, who has no linguistic capacities, who has not worked in a political system outside of Britain, can simply go and inhabit the governor鈥檚 house in Kolkata, and make decisions about an entire population of people that he knows nothing about.鈥� And we have not moved far from that situation. Today Western journalists who have not had the experience living in a particular country, who never experienced its system, who have no linguistic capacities, can plant themselves in glass residential towers of major Asian cities, and shape the global conversation about entire populations of places that they know little about.
(Ironically, the BBC podcast series , which features the above quote from Janam Mukherjee, has been of another famed historian, Madhusree Mukerjee, for its storytelling, again illustrating the dubious operation of contemporary Western media.)
I look to academics to correct this injustice. In this 鈥淎sia Century鈥�, it is become all the more necessary to understand the region鈥檚 complexities, and Asian studies and its member scholars are more indispensable than ever before. The only way to shape reality is to shape its perception, and that power cannot be allowed to rest in the hands of the ignorant.
This research was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2022-OLU-2250005).
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