{"id":360156,"date":"2018-05-07T22:28:59","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T21:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-do-us-pundits-know-about-north-korea-that-88-of-south-koreans-dont\/"},"modified":"2018-05-07T22:28:59","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T21:28:59","slug":"what-do-us-pundits-know-about-north-korea-that-88-of-south-koreans-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-do-us-pundits-know-about-north-korea-that-88-of-south-koreans-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do US Pundits Know About North Korea That 88% of South Koreans Don\u2019t?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nation:<\/p>\n

“The pundits who shape the US media\u2019s coverage of North Korea were spinning the summit, and Kim\u2019s outreach in particular, as a dangerous, even ominous, event” (The Nation<\/strong>,\u00a0 5\/2\/18<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to a recent poll<\/a>, 88 percent of the South Korean public viewed the recent peace summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in as a success. In addition, 65 percent<\/a> of South Koreans trust Kim Jong-un on his pledge to denuclearize, and Moon Jae-in\u2019s approval ratings have shot up to 86 percent. Broadly speaking, recent developments between North and South Korea have been met with widespread optimism and praise from the South Korean public.<\/p>\n

Reading US media, one would hardly know any of this. As journalist Tim Shorrock noted last week in The Nation<\/b> (5\/2\/18<\/a>), the response in US media was the polar opposite to how these peace efforts are being received in South Korea. US pundits met the summit with faux-savvy skepticism, a combination of \u201cnothing to see here\u201d cynicism and suspicions that Trump was getting \u201cplayed.\u201d As Shorrock wrote:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYada, yada, yada,\u201d the perennial hawk Max Boot wrote<\/a> disparagingly in the Washington Post<\/b> about the \u201cKorea summit hype,\u201d adding that \u201cthere is very little of substance here.\u201d Similar hot takes were offered by Nicholas Kristof<\/a> and Nicholas Eberstadt<\/a> in the New York Times<\/b>, Jennifer Rubin<\/a> in the Washington Post<\/b>, Robin Wright<\/a> in the New Yorker<\/b>, and Michael O\u2019Hanlon<\/a> in The Hill<\/b>. Their doubts were repeated and amplified as gospel by the usual critics on cable TV.<\/p>\n

The kicker came on Sunday, April 29, when the Times<\/b>\u2019 Mark Landler painted the Korean summit as an affront to US national-security interests. Citing every establishment pundit he could find, Landler argued that a resumption of diplomatic ties between the Koreas \u201cwill inevitably erode the crippling economic sanctions against the North,\u201d while making it hard for Trump \u201cto threaten military action against a country that is extending an olive branch.\u201d It was depressing to see such overt cheerleading for US imperial control over Korea in the media.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Foreign<\/p>\n

Optimism was out of fashion among pundits discussing the Korean talks (Foreign Policy<\/strong>, 4\/30\/18<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Media abounded with pessimistic takes such as \u201cOptimism About Korea Will Kill Us All: The First Step Towards Peace Is Lowering Expectations\u201d (Foreign Policy<\/b>, 4\/20\/18<\/a>), \u201cKim Jong Un Is Masterfully Playing Trump\u2019s Game\u201d (Bloomberg<\/b>, 5\/3\/18<\/a>), \u201cNorth Korea\u2019s Warm\u2014and Fuzzy\u2014Peace Summit\u201d (Daily Beast,<\/b> 4\/27\/18<\/a>) and \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t Pop the Champagne Yet\u2019: Experts Take on the Inter-Korea Summit\u201d (Washington Examiner<\/b>, 4\/28\/18<\/a>), all of which echoed the conventional wisdom that we have gone through this before, and there was little new or plausible in the peace agreement.<\/p>\n

The American watching and reading public was subjected to a lot of critical, cynical and skeptical analysis, but one thing they were lacking\u2014almost to a pundit\u2014was genuine optimism. Not a grudging acknowledgement of a potential upside, thrown in at the end to hedge one\u2019s bets, but an earnest appreciation of how significant this rapprochement might be to a country torn apart for over 70 years. What we had none of was the enthusiasm expressed by the vast majority of the South Korean public\u2014who, incidentally, have quite a bit more to lose if this is indeed all a sinister ploy.<\/p>\n

A great deal of what it takes to be a US foreign policy expert is an ability to recap conventional wisdom\u2014to be able to say, \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this all before,\u201d and the status quo will likely remain the same. A status quo, it\u2019s worth noting, that means that the decades-long US military presence in Korea will remain for decades more to come.<\/p>\n

But the dark mood of the US chattering classes compels one to ask: What do these pundits know that the South Korean public doesn\u2019t? What unique insight into the proceedings do they have that the general South Korean citizenry does not, these publications littered with quotes from the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs\u2014all of which are funded<\/a> by a combination<\/a> of weapons contractors<\/a> and NATO\/GCC countries, and which primarily exist to defend the Washington foreign policy consensus?<\/p>\n

The point is not to fetishize \u201cKorean voices,\u201d in the superficial manner of demands to \u201clisten to Syrians\u201d or \u201clisten to Libyans\u201d when advocating one \u201cdo something\u201d in those countries. (This talking point is usually followed by a post or comment from a hand-selected Syrian or Libyan who supports the Washington consensus on bombing or invading said country.) There is, of course, no uniform voice of Syrians or Libyans or Koreans\u2014or any large group of people\u2014and, indeed, many Koreans are skeptical of Pyongyang\u2019s motives. One can, however, examine polling to judge the relative popularity of a position and compare this to the voices we hear in Western media.<\/p>\n

When 88 percent of the subject of a news story think something is good, and 95 percent of US media say that thing is bad, one should ask why that is. And if South Korea is under some type of dictator\u2019s spell, or is a county populated almost entirely by credulous dupes, shouldn\u2019t that itself be a major story in urgent need of examination?<\/p>\n

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