The Different Interpretations of Denuclearization: Text Analysis of Rodong Sinmun

• In Event: Political Communication Across Asia

Abstract

Does Kim Jong Un really want to the denuclearization of North Korea? Previous studies have analyzed the strategic behavior of North Korean leaders relying on several perspectives including game theory and selectorate theory. Given the hermit kingdom's limited information, it has always been a demanding work for researchers to understand North Korean leaders' intention and purpose. This study aims to reveal what North Korean leaders mean by denuclearization using textual data from Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korean. Additionally, the study includes other stake holders' understanding on denuclearization by incorporating important US (NYT and WP), Chinese (People's Daily and Global Times) South Korean (Chosun and Kyunghyang) newspapers. Specifically, I analyze North Korea's nuclear power relevant newspaper articles in 2017, when they completed nuclear power by testing ICBMs and a hydrogen bomb, and exchanged a series of verbal threats with Trump and increased war crisis in Korean peninsula, and in 2018, when the tension between US and North Korea released by North Korea's winter olympic participation, Moon-Kim summit, and Trump-Kim summit. With the textual data, first, I use LDA(Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to figure out the different interpretation of denuclearization among the four countries. Then, using sentiment analysis, I determine whether an expression is negative or positive. Lastly, I adopt semantic network analysis to examine the relations between in each year. The results preliminary show that North Korea and China understand the denuclearization as incremental implementation or removing US nuclear umbrella to South Korea while US sees denuclearization as CVID or comprehensive approach. Interestingly, Korean newspapers interpret denuclearization differently depending on their ideological affinity.

Author

• Jaedong Choi, Yonsei University