The DPRK’s Bellicose Foreign Affairs Rhetoric

February 17, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Mānoa Campus, East-West Center Research Program, Burns Hall, Room 3012 Add to Calendar

The DPRK’s Bellicose Foreign Affairs Rhetoric: Pyongyang’s Sui Generis Symmetry Between Domestically Directed Propaganda and Internationally Directed Signals


Dr. Mason Richey

POSCO Visiting Fellow, East-West Center
Associate Professor of Politics, Graduate School of International and Area Studies,
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea


Wednesday, February 17, 2016 12:00 noon to 1:00pm
John A. Burns Hall, Room 3012 (3rd floor)

Domestic and international politics intersect, and frequently rhetoric that is appropriate in one setting is not used in the other. For example, political leaders employ (a) hardline language for domestic audiences in order to energize domestic political support, while using (b) diplomatic language for settings in which tactfulness is necessary to persuade international leaders. North Korea is a confounding case. Its political rhetoric is extraordinary because the level of belligerence is the same for messages directed toward domestic and international audiences. Indeed North Korea’s bellicose political rhetoric is (in) famous for its hyperbolic locutions: Seoul will be turned into a “sea of fire,” North Korea will fire nuclear armed rockets at the White House and Pentagon (“the sources of all evil”), etc. Given the potential for crisis escalation that such rhetoric might provoke, it is important to understand why and how North Korea conducts international signaling in this way. The research presented at this Brown Bag Seminar examines the patterns of North Korean bellicose rhetoric during the period 1997-2006.


Mason Richey is Associate Professor of Politics in the Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea. His research areas are East Asian security dynamics, great power diplomacy, and European foreign and security policy as applied to Asia. He has published articles in Global Governance, Foreign Policy Analysis, Asian Studies Review, the Korean Journal of Defence Analysis, and the 2014 Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. He writes regular policy briefs for the Institute of European Studies and the Egmont Institute: Royal Institute of International Relations, and is a regular contributor of editorials for the Korean newspapers Joongang Daily and Korea Times.


Event Sponsor
East-West Center, Research Program, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Laura Moriyama, 944-7444, Laura.Moriyama@eastwestcenter.org

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