Framing North Korea as an 'axis of evil': A comparative analysis of North Korea in the United States and South Korean newspapers

This study explores the role of media representation in the construction of North Korea as a so-called "axis of evil" country. This study examines how two major American and two South Korean newspapers ( The New York Times and The Washington Post, Chosun Ilbo and Hankyoreh Sinmon) represent---specifically through framing---North Korea's national image; how President Bush framed the North Korean national image through his speech; and how the four newspapers represented Bush's speech. To conduct this research, three theories (theory of social construction of reality, media framing theory, and entitlement theory) and two research methods (ethnographic content analysis and framing analysis) are used for analyzing media texts and presidential rhetoric. The project offers insights into the role of news media in the representation of one country's national image as a case study in decoding media representations and the interplay between them, presidential rhetoric, and national image.; Through the framing analysis, I examine the following: (1) the words or phrases emphasized; (2) the images excluded or trivialized; and (3) what these frames suggest about the mediated image of North Korea. Furthermore, the news articles are analyzed to find patterns in representation, and to reveal emphasis on or exclusion of nationalistic symbols. Findings of this study suggest that media frames work effectively to create particular images of social issues or objects. Specifically, the U.S. news media achieve hegemony by successfully transmitting the Bush administration's foreign policy toward North Korea and providing it to the public, who mostly get information and ideas related to North Korea through news media. The U.S. newspapers also actively and subtly support the construction of the Bush administration hegemony by transmitting the Bush administration's negative language about North Korea and through the omission of alternative (positive) discourses about North Korea. The South Korean newspapers were also behaving hegemonically. They serve the societal purpose of the media to defend the dominant social and political agendas of privileged groups in their society. The South Korean newspapers interpret and frame international issues in a way that reflects the privileged groups' viewpoint in their society.