The late North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il had thousands of Hollywood movies in his personal collection, furnishing him with what he thought was a deep knowledge of a country he would never see. He was particularly fond, reportedly, of The Godfather—so much so that he ran his country like a Mafioso. His son and successor, Kim Jong-un—or someone in his coterie—has as impressive an understanding of the American media landscape as the elder Kim had of Francis Ford Coppola’s oeuvre.
Since this spring, Kim’s regime has invited several media organs to visit Pyongyang. It’s no coincidence who’s been let in—North Korea is the most repressive country on the planet, and it screens visitors with military precision. The regime has been shrewd in its choice of invitees: All are representatives of what the president would call “fake news,” but what are more generally known as the legacy or establishment media. And as hobbled as these once-towering giants may be, they’re still influential: Even if the president doesn’t cotton to it, what they report matters, because it informs the opinions of elite policymakers as well as an educated, politically active segment of the public.
An early and frequent visitor has been CNN’s Will Ripley. In May, Ripley, who has steadfastly refused to answer questions from this magazine about his reporting, uncritically quoted a North Korean who claimed the well-known fact that families of defectors are sent to labor camps is “100 percent evil propaganda.” In the same interview, which CNN admits “was organized by the [North Korean] government,” another North Korean said, “Our society is one big family with leader Kim Jong Un as the father.” Scintillating stuff.
The regime was evidently pleased with what it saw: Ripley has been invited back to Pyongyang on several occasions—he’s been there 15 times in all—and was even allowed to film a one-hour documentary there. (“Ripley speaks to a resident who has witnessed many of these missile launches and says it gives him ‘great pride’ when he sees a missile in the sky,” the promotional material gushes.) Contrast that with the experience of Anna Fifield, a Washington Post correspondent and former Financial Times journalist with deep knowledge of Korea. She has reported critically from the country and even live-streamed an unauthorized video from Pyongyang on a visit there. She was denied a visa on her most recent attempt to enter North Korea.
Ripley’s reportage from North Korea has set the template for the dual messages the regime is sending through its American media emissaries. One: Life for North Koreans is good, and improving, thanks to the benevolence and wisdom of Kim Jong-un. And two: North Korea is a fearsome, nuclear-armed state, and the United States had better not mess with it. Not coincidentally, this coincides with Kim Jong-un’s Byungjin policy: simultaneous economic and military development. (His father, by contrast, was widely understood to have lavished resources on the military while the civilian economy withered.) North Korea coverage these days is Byungjin in English.
Evan Osnos of the New Yorker also brought home Byungjin. Osnos is no Ripley—he’s a terrific reporter who was long based in Beijing and has a real understanding of Asia. He visited North Korea this fall and, like the CNN correspondent, found a regime boastful of its military capabilities. “The United States is not the only country that can wage a preventive war,” one foreign ministry official told him. Message received. Osnos also told of a capital city that appears in many ways to be thriving. “On the streets of Pyongyang, there are flashes of modernity, even style. Some women can be seen wearing stilettos and short skirts. . . . Now and then, I saw people hunched over cell phones.” (Pyongyang, by the way, is a world apart from most of the rest of North Korea, which remains desperately poor.)
The gold standard of Byungjin journalism was demonstrated this month by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has just returned from North Korea. While still in the country, Kristof posted numerous photos on Instagram attesting to North Korea’s economic progress under the Dauphin’s leadership. A water park, an amusement park ride, and a tasty-looking pizza all made the grade—this in a country still suffering from grievous food shortages.
Kristof’s subsequent column, published a few days after his return, told the other part of the North Korean story. “North Korea is galvanizing its people to expect a nuclear war with the United States. . . . This military mobilization is accompanied by the ubiquitous assumption that North Korea could not only survive a nuclear conflict, but also win it,” he wrote. “ ‘The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war,’ Choe, the Foreign Ministry official, told me. ‘We can survive’ such a war, he added, and he and other officials said that it was not the right time for talks with the U.S.”
Unfortunately, unlike Osnos and Ripley, Kristof is an opinion writer, and he came back advocating many—though not exclusively—positions that would surely please Pyongyang. He touts “talks without conditions,” for instance, a longstanding goal of the regime.
The missives of Kristof and others are fulfilling another regime goal: Byungjin is what Pyongyang wants the world to see. But is it real? Is North Korea’s military truly ferocious, or would it fold in the face of confrontation? Are North Koreans—even the few fortunate ones in Pyongyang—actually happy with Kim Jong-un’s policies of nukes and circuses, or is there widespread discontent? Alas, Byungjin reporting brings us no closer to any insight on these deeply important questions.
But judged by its own standards, North Korea’s press strategy is undoubtedly working—its message is clear and being amplified. Given that, we can probably await Pyongyang dispatches from Lawrence O’Donnell or Ruth Marcus in the coming days. Though of course, if the regime really wants to affect President Trump’s thinking, it should probably invite the cast of Fox & Friends for a Pyongyang sojourn instead.
Ethan Epstein is an associate editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
