Why is the media glamorising North Korea?

The 2018 Winter Olympics are underway, with athletes from all around the world competing for those ever-glorious medals. It would be foolish, however, to pretend that the biggest story of these Olympics is who takes home the most Golds – rather, it is the participation of North Korea and the possibility of thawed relations with the South. But, instead of merely reporting the news, the media has bigged up North Korea to a worryingly positive degree. Given the terrifying spectre of nuclear war that has haunted news coverage as of late, how can we explain this?

CNN has really come under fire, with critics on both sides attacking its description of the North Korean government and its public presence (comprising mainly of cheerleaders) in ‘fawning’ terms. They ran stories about how Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong-Un’s sister and director of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation, was ‘stealing the show at the Winter Olympics.’ News outlets lined up to discuss her fashion sense and her gestures, and to compare her favourably to Vice-President Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump – they’ve talked for whole segments about how beautiful she is, and how she has headlined an ‘army of beauties’ that is putting on a top-notch charm offensive.

The media is always very keen to talk human rights abuses when the Chinese Premier pays a visit

If you spoke of any key female political figure in these kinds of terms, you’d rightly be slapped down and told to focus on what matters – their policies, etc. This is especially important given who Kim Yo-jong is – the master of North Korea propaganda, and she is on a blacklist for human rights abuses. The media is always very keen to talk human rights abuses when the Chinese Premier pays a visit but, when it’s North Korea, it seems that Kim Yo-jung’s freckles are more newsworthy. Still, at least she gave Mike Pence some ‘deadly side-eye,’ because that’s what counts.

The reason for this positive coverage can be explained with an old axiom – the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As we have seen, the media have been defining themselves in opposition to President Trump – with the increased tensions between the two, it seems logical enough that a media biased against Trump would align itself with his enemies (interestingly, when asked about fawning coverage of North Korea, CNN’s Chris Cuomo claimed that the criticisms lay not with the content of the reports, but with President Trump having stoked up media animosity). The implication of their coverage, especially given a focus on the thawing relations between the North and South, is that the US executive are militaristic and eager for war whereas the North is now seeking peace.

These players, the media argued, were expressing their constitutional right to protest

This coverage has led to some incredible hypocrisy – for months on end, the American media has been slating Trump for criticising NFL players who choose not to stand for the country’s national anthem in order to protest police brutality and discrimination. These players, the media argued, were expressing their constitutional right to protest (to which you can only say: ‘fair enough’). But when Mike Pence refuses to stand for North Korea to protest actual human rights abuses, it’s just not on – they ran hit pieces and show segments slating the Vice-President for refusing to clap for the most brutal repressive regime on Earth.

Now, if the North is truly trying to reconcile, doesn’t it deserve a spot of positive coverage? Probably not, for two key reasons. Firstly, nothing has actually changed – sure, it will be a great thing if North Korea can be a force for good on the world stage, but a friendly presence at the Winter Olympics isn’t changing the mass starvation in the North nor putting a hold to nuclear weapons testing. Secondly, this level of coverage isn’t actual news – getting supposedly serious journalists to analyse Kim Yo-jung’s sparkly top is a mick-take of the highest order. The US media is seeing incredible levels of distrust at the moment and, as some journalists have noted, perhaps glamourising one of the country’s enemies is not the way to win viewers back round.