A Strange but Familiar Foe: North Korea’s Media Image and Public Imagination

In this article, I explore media representations in a UK-owned online news outlet of the North Korean situation, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall as a means of analyzing the discursive formations through which representations of state criminality, associated victimization, and normative transgressions are presented to the audience. I argue that the strategy of encoding the discourse leads to the emptying out of cultural and historical contexts. In many cases, reports “refill” this void with appeals to lifeworld interpretations that resonate more with audiences’ historical consciousness than depict the reality of North Korea. I conclude by suggesting that “emptied” reports may serve the function of creating a sense of ontological security that conditions audiences’ decoding of the media texts.