N. Korea is an embarrassment

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Michael Breen

N. Korea is an embarrassment

Posted : 2010-11-04 16:58

Updated : 2010-11-04 16:58

By Michael Breen

In past decades when Korea’s leaders were either hyper-sensitive anti-communists or winsome yearners for unification, the slightest movement in North Korea got nationwide attention down here.

But those days are gone. Few developments in North Korea cause more than a ripple of interest among South Koreans. Southerners don’t like North Korea’s regime, have no interest in what it does or says, and won’t until it really changes, something no one sees happening any time soon.

But here’s a new reason to perk up and take notice: it seems that every time North Korea makes international news, global perception of South Korea suffers.

Take the most recent example, the emergence of Kim Jong-il’s son Jong-un as next-in-line to the throne in Pyongyang. According to Lee Bae-yong, the new head of the Presidential Council on Nation Branding, when this story hit the front pages around the world, the impact on South Korea’s image was ``alarming.”

That is because negative news from North Korea ― and even positive news like an actual succession plan or a decent harvest is negative _ gets associated in the global mind with South Korea. Pollsters find that when respondents in other countries, especially outside of Asia, are asked what they think or know about South Korea, their ``Korea” folder immediately turns out stories about Kim Jong-il. Stories associated with him feature Nazi-like parades, horrendous human rights abuses, military rhetoric, shaking down neighbor states, fat family in a starving country, elections with single candidates who get 100 percent of the vote, rogue nuclear weapons, and the rest.

This is not to say that people think Kim Jong-il is the leader of South Korea. The effect is more subtle. It is that values and behaviors associated with North Korean rub off onto South Koreans. Thus we may be seen as militaristic, cruel, rude and somewhat threatening. This perception turns people off Korea and Koreans, regardless of compass direction. The idea of coming on vacation is a non-starter.

The fact is that North Korea is more than an embarrassment. Everything it does undermines our own efforts here to build a decent society and make an honest living.

It is time for South Koreans to get over the delusion about ``blood” and make it clear that North Korea is a separate and very foreign country.

But that’s easier said than done. When told they are confused with North Koreans, many people here blame foreign journalists and want to ``correct” their mistaken reports. But how do you clarify the difference between North and South Korea in every news story? Ask reporters to add ``no relation” in parenthesis every time South Korea is mentioned in a story about North Korea?

This would not work because there is a relation. The problem we face derives from the simple single fact that both countries share the same name. With the exception of the part of Asia that uses Chinese characters, both countries are called Korea in English and something similar in other languages.

You can call yourself ``South” something and maintain a distinct identity when there is no northern competitor, like, say South Africa. Similarly, as a disputed territory, Western Sahara has a lot to worry about but Eastern Sahara isn’t one of them. It doesn’t exist.

But when there are two parts, there is always an association. Eire may have dropped the ``South” as the bigger party, but the people of Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland are still seen as Irish. The world will not always note the difference. Did you know, for example, that Van Morrison is from Belfast and Bono from Dublin?

In Georgia, the government calls South Ossetia, where it has faced separatists, the Tskhinvali Region precisely because using ``South Ossetia” affirms the idea of a political connection with North Ossetia which is an area across the border in Russia.

In tackling this problem of negative association, Korea needs to know what it can change and what it can’t. It cannot change North Korea. But it can change how it talks about it. One place to start would be to say out loud, as often and as loudly as warranted, that North Korea is an embarrassment. That would not just be a good strategy. It would be true.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.