What Most Media Missed About the Nuclear Test

February 14, 2013

By Danny Schechter

It was the nuclear test heard round the world, upstaging President Obama’s State of The Union address and leading to an escalation of sabre rattling and international tension after many nations, including Russia, joined the US in condemnation.

President Obama characterized it as a “highly provocative act that threatens U.S. security,” implying unstated consequences.

Most of the western media accounts did not even try to explain North Korea’s position or provide any context for the test. The Institute for Public Accuracy did speak to experts who shed light on some underlying issues.

•Christine Ahn, executive director of the Korea Policy Institute noted that earlier in the month, the Pentagon and South Korea started joined military exercises, which the North Koreans saw as a prelude to aggression. “The U.S.-ROK [South Korea] started joint military exercises in the East Sea on Feb. 4, ratcheting up the tensions in the region. South Korea under Lee Myung Bak has pursued a regime change/collapse approach which the U.S. has willfully followed.”

•Joe Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee notes, “beginning with the Korean War, the United States has prepared and threatened to attack North Korea with nuclear weapons at least nine times, that it maintains the so-called U.S. ‘nuclear umbrella’ over Northeast Asia, and that its current contingency plans for war with North Korea include a possible first-strike nuclear attack.”

•Tim Shorrock, an expert on secret intelligence adds: “the North Korean government is angry about “massive war games that the United States and South Korea [engage in] almost every year — one took place last week. And they see the United States and these war games as very hostile and as a threat to their sovereignty, as they put it…

[The U.S. and South Korea] practice first-strike nuclear capability. They practice invading North Korea. They practice taking over the territory of North Korea and having South Korea-U.S. forces take it over while there’s a crisis there.”

A U.S. Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia, noted in a recent statement criticized the test, but added: “We understand the North Korean test was part of a cycle of threat and response to previous U.S. nuclear threats, and to continued military provocations. We cannot ignore the double standards and hypocrisies of the members of the “nuclear club” who refuse to fulfill their Article VI disarmament commitments of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitments by “modernizing” their homicidal arsenals while insisting that other nations refrain from becoming nuclear powers. While North Korea has conducted three explosive nuclear tests, compared to the United States’, 1,054.”

These arguments about the conflict in Korea go back to World War II, when the Japanese invaded and ruled with the support of local collaborators. Those were the people—authoritarian, if not fascist—who later led the fight to divide the country.

The great American journalist I.F. Stone wrote a hidden history of the Korean War in much the same way that he, years later, debunked the justifications for the US intervention in Viet Nam. This history has been “disappeared” like Latin American leftists during the Dirty Wars. The version of events promoted in the media reflects a distorted pro-Cold War narrative that cannot be trusted.

For a solid alternative, check out the work of University of Chicago Korea specialist, and chairman of their History Department, Bruce Cumings, a serious scholar, who has also written about the media’s coverage of Korea.

You don’t have to support North Korea to find out what is behind all the rhetoric we are hearing. It is essential to get the context and background before mouthing off or accepting what politicians and the press are saying.

Photo: Swanksalot