2. Critical Discourse Analysis of Public Relations

Taoka Shunji (Trans. Kenji Hasegawa), “Japanese Government Misinformation on North Korea’s Rocket Launch,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 14(8) 2016, accessed April 24, 2016, http://​apjjf.​org/​2016/​08/​Taoka.​html.

It is important to note that the 2016 satellite launch stands in contrast to the actual ballistic missile tests of March 2017, which are consistently framed in Japanese corporate media as a North Korean “provocation.” This framing of current events erases key parts of the larger picture where US and South Korean military forces conduct annual military exercises across the Peninsula, which involve 320,000 troops. Decades of such war-gaming exercises have long been seen by North Korea (DRPK) as a provocative disguise for impending military invasion, and this has had unsurprising effects in North Korea. Concluding that persistent military manuevers threaten the very existence of the DPRK, North Korean leaders react with predictable measure: they have managed to develop their own nuclear deterrence. Commentary in corporate media in the West (and in Japan) tend to ignore the larger context regarding the likely reasons why the DPRK is determined to develop and test its own atomic arsenal and why this capability serves, however wrong, its power to bargain. In 2015 and 2017, North Korea’s proposal to suspend development and testing of its emerging nuclear program, including ballistic missiles, came with a counterproposal for the US to cease its joint military maneuvers in the ROK. Both Presidents Obama and Trump rejected these offers. Complicating efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution in March 2017 was an “internal White House review of strategy on North Korea [which] includes the possibility of military force or regime change to blunt the country’s nuclear-weapons threat, people familiar with the process said, a prospect that has some US allies in the region on edge” (Wall Street Journal). The review hints a similar strategy to that applied in the preemptive attack on Iraq 2003 may be chosen. As noted by Steve Rabson (September 2017) in private communications, the effects of recent sanctions on the DPRK from the UN can also be understood by a larger historical context: the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 emerged as a reaction to the US and UK embargo on Japan.

A parallel can be seen in South Korea, with the impending deployment of missile defense systems that have already ignited protests. The US military’s terminal high attitude area defense (THAAD) system, as of this writing, is scheduled for deployment in Korea in the face of sharp criticism from China and North Korea.

Op cit., Fairclough, 1.

Ibid., 21.

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946).

Ibid., 21.

Op cit., Fairclough, 64.

Ibid., 28.

Edward Bernays suggests in Propaganda (2005) that these public acts are part of the system of propaganda and that some of the “phenomena of the process are criticized—the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses” (39).

Herbert Schiller. Living in the Number One Country: Reflection from a Critic of American Empire (New York: Seven Stories Press), 152.

Nominalization refers to speech acts that illustrate efforts to turn processes into entities.

In contemporary Japan, those journalists or entire media organizations that do not toe the line risk being sacked or closed down altogether. Discussions of examples appear throughout the book.

Ibid., 783.

Ibid., 6.

A transcript of George W. Bush’s full speech can be found at https://​georgewbush-whitehouse.​archives.​gov/​news/​releases/​2001/​09/​20010920-8.​html.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books), 17.

Ibid., 17.

“American Dialect Society,” 2006, http://​www.​americandialect.​org/​truthiness_​voted_​2005_​word_​of_​the_​year.

Author unknown, “Critics of ‘indigenous people’ designation must recognize history of annexation and oppression,” Ryukyu Shimpo April 29, 2016.

Ibid.

“UN Special Rapporteur shows concern over Japanese government’s crackdown on Henoko protesters,” Ryukyu Shimpo. May 10, 2016 at http://​ryukyushimpo.​jp/​news/​entry-262965.​html.

“Critics of ‘Indigenous People’ Designation Must Be Recognize History of Annexation and Oppression,” Ryukyu Shimpo. http://​english.​ryukyushimpo.​jp/​2016/​05/​04/​24981/​.

Ibid.

UN, http://​www.​un.​org/​esa/​socdev/​unpfii/​documents/​5session_​factsheet1.​pdf.

Okinawa Prefectural Archives. “Emperor’s Message,” accessed February 18, 2016 at http://​www.​archives.​pref.​okinawa.​jp/​collection/​2008/​03/​post-21.​html. (Emphasis added.)

For further details, please visit: http://​www.​archives.​pref.​okinawa.​jp/​collection/​2008/​03/​post-21.​html. (Emphasis added.)

The Ryukyu-Okinawa History and Culture Website at http://​ryukyu-okinawa.​net/​pages/​archive/​emp1.​html. (Emphasis added.)

Ibid. (Emphasis added.)

Ibid.

Op Cit., Okinawa Prefectural Archives.