There is no shortage of unknown variables when it comes to gauging the significance of North Korea’s decision to test some kind of nuclear device last week (not least of which is, how crazy is Kim Jung Il?). But one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that no matter how many nukes they have, North Korea will never be able to pose a serious threat to the good folks of Kalamazoo, or Boca Raton, or even New York City. The same, however, cannot be said for Japan, South Korea, and China.
We imagine that, for them, this is their Cuban Missile Crisis.
But because of limited staff or resources (not much money left over after paying for the armored vehicles of Baghdad), or simply lack of knowledge or the American public’s lack of interest, there has just not been that much on-the-ground reporting from these three countries in the days that have elapsed since the test and its — excuse the expression — fallout.
What we have read about is the politics — most interestingly, the battles in South Korea over whether the North’s belligerence proves that the “Sunshine” policy of reconciliation between the two countries was a failure. An article in the New York Times explains it well, showing how the issue has pit conservatives against liberals. About Japan, the Times alone also has an excellent article about how the hard-line new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been successfully dealing with the crisis, using “his blend of nationalist appeals and diplomatic pragmatism” to calm a public that “greeted the North’s test announcement with outrage and fear.” The article also analyzes how the North Korean blast might be shifting alliances on the Pacific Rim, with Tokyo now moving closer to Seoul and Beijing.
Reading these articles, it’s easy to be struck by how little we know about these countries. Even to those reading their newspapers closely every morning, much of this background comes as relatively new information (newer, let’s say, than what Mark Foley’s IM screen name is, or how many times George Allen used the N-word).
But what is missing, even from these articles, is a sense of how that outraged and fearful public is in fact responding. The political analysis can be written from an armchair, but not so with reporting how people are feeling. And this has been strangely absent.
Speaking on the NPR show On the Media, Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, made the point that we miss a lot when we fail to cover public opinion in these countries. Asked what the difference would be if there were more reporters in the region, he answered: “I think what you would see much more of is how is this rippling out into these populations of people that sit right next door to North Korea. I still haven’t seen a good story, for example, on what this has meant to South Korean public opinion.”
We looked for these types of articles using LexisNexis and what we came up with was pretty thin gruel. The Los Angeles Times had a good one about the South Korean street, and USA Today was able to file a piece about the anger of the Chinese.
Sadly, there aren’t too many more examples of good reporting from inside these countries. Partly, this has to do with a dearth of journalists in these places. As Sneider says in his On the Media interview, the only American news organization that still has a bureau in Seoul is the Wall Street Journal.
Short of more notepads on the ground, maybe papers need to be doing more of what the Washington Post does when it compiles clips from international newspapers. This roundup actually gives a much fuller picture of the debates and conversations raging in the region than most articles have provided.
It’s clear why we need these from-the-ground-up analyses. As Sneider said, it is at this level that the pressures that end up influencing government action begin to bubble. And when we lose coverage of the street, we have a hard time figuring out why leaders react in certain ways. It’s a perspective we cannot afford to abandon, especially not when there are potential nuclear bombs on the other end of the equation.
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.