Abas Pauti is a community advisor in Hatch Hall. He is seen eating an Oreo at 2:00 am in the Hatch Hall main lobby after finishing his on-call duties. He is rewarding himself for a night of dealing with the antics of college freshmen on a Saturday in early September.
How to Deal With North Korea Blog #1
“How to Deal With North Korea”, an Atlantic article by Mark Bowden, outlines the four possibilities Bowden sees as methods for dealing with Kim Jong Un’s erratic threat of nuclear annihilation. The text story includes a 3 minute graphic video of Bowden explaining, in simple terms, how the crisis with North Korea came to be, and an audio interview featuring a more elongated version of Bowden’s theories.
The text piece is long and detailed. It gives a lot of context to the issue in Pyongyang, outlining its risk today and the role it’s played in the past 20 years, which is more prominent than other news stories have portrayed it — we have been faced with nuclear threats from North Korea for much longer than most might realize. Because Kim Jong Un is so belligerent, it’s hard to take a lot of his threats seriously, but the story takes his leadership and nuclear threats with a general sense of gravity. Bowden states that any confrontation or attack with North Korea would inevitably end in massive death counts, both in Asia and the United States. The article paints a clear picture of what’s been happening in Pyongyang and provides nuanced explanations and answers that haven’t been provided in other text pieces relating to the nuclear threat.
The graphic video is lacking and definitely the weakest component of the story. It gives a very simplified version of Bowden’s article, essentially defining how the problem in North Korea came to be, who Kim Jong Un is, and how Bowden thinks a US retaliation will play out. The problem with the video, and with all of these types of “Crisis Defined in 3 minutes!” videos, is the fact that is severely lacks nuance. Coupled with the article it does a good job of providing visuals and solid facts to set a base of understanding for the reader, but the video by itself doesn’t answer any serious questions and, if anything, does the opposite of what the article did. The nuclear threat in North Korea is a big deal, but we must be rational about how big of a threat it actually is. While the article ends with Bowden explaining that only 10% of Seoul’s population actually fears a North Korean missile attack, the video ends with Bowden stating that the most reasonable solution is to simply sit and wait for Pyongyang to inevitably bomb us. These two severely different endings play a role in how the viewer/reader forms an opinion. If the video is going to serve as an accurate representation of the ominous North Korean missile threat, it must expand on how countries close to North Korea view Kim Jong Un. This is an extremely important detail that can influence in how we, as Americans, gauge the urgency of the situation. It’s important for news surrounding this issue to be extremely rational with its coverage — otherwise we’re essentially at risk of falling into a doomful, Cold War propaganda-type mess, inciting existential fear and helplessness. This is a strategically bad move because it could increase the likelihood of the US instigating something that doesn’t actually need to be instigated.
Bowden’s interview on Radio Atlantic rounds out the text story but could be too nuanced for the casual news listener — the foreign affairs jargon could ward those with little understanding of the situation off. The interview is not meant to give quick facts or background information — there is a clear understanding between Bowden and his interviewer that anyone listening understands the basic gist of the crisis and doesn’t need things spelled out, which isn’t necessarily the case in the article and definitely not the case in the video. It serves its purpose in providing a much deeper look at Bowden’s rationale, but works better within the text piece than by itself.
If one component of the story had to be chosen as the most informative, it would be the text piece, but each component plays its role. Overall the package gives a good look at the situation in North Korea and educates readers on the strategic role the US has played, is playing, and will play in the future. The main problem with the package is the fact that it lacks visuals, but since it’s more of a strategic thinkpiece than a strict news article, this isn’t as imperative to the story as it would be otherwise.
First blog post
This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog.
Clare Elena Roth 