Visual Politics and North Korea

Seeing is Believing

David Shim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135011369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the realm of international relations, there are seemingly few states like North Korea. Whether it is the country's human rights situation, its precarious everyday life or its so-called foreign policy of coercion and nuclear brinkmanship, no matter what this 'pariah' nation says and does it affects the state and stability of regional and global politics. But what do we know about North Korea and how do we come to know it? This book argues that visual imagery plays a decisive role in this operation. By discussing two exemplary areas – everyday photography and satellite imagery – the book takes into account the role of images in the way that particular issues related to North Korea are understood in contemporary geopolitics. Images work. They do something by evoking a particular perspective of what is shown in them, allowing only specific ways of seeing and knowing. In this sense, images are deeply political. Individual methodological usages in the book can provide a procedural basis from which to start or rethink further studies on visuality, both in IR and beyond. It also opens an innovative path for future studies on East Asia, making the book attractive to a range of specialists and thus holding an appeal beyond the boundaries of a single discipline.

1 Approaching and analysing visual representation

The preceding chapter gave a glimpse of the importance of imaging in approaches to North Korea. But why images? What makes them peculiar? What are their characteristics and what might be problematic in engaging with them? What are the differences – and the relationships – between pictures and words?

Before addressing these questions through an outline of the methodological and theoretical propositions of this work, the specific guiding features of the current general approach to images are outlined. It should be stressed that an analysis of images does not spare the researcher from the need to scrutinize texts and language as well. While visual representations are the main topic of research, textual forms such as (sub)titles, captions and accompanying essays also have to be included in the analysis. The discussion in the section ‘The politics of visual representation’ will go into further detail on the relationship between images and texts, but for now it is sufficient to note that the effect(s) and meaning(s) of pictures are only created though the interplay between images and texts. This epistemological view circumvents the privileging of one mode of representation (for example, images above texts) over the other, and states that images unfold their full force in conjunction with text and context. As visual culture scholar W. J. T. Mitchell (2005: 257) has observed, all (visual) media are ‘mixed media’ in that they also depend on other communicating practices. That is to say, an analysis of images always entails an analysis of texts. Second, it should also be emphasized that it is not being suggested that the pictures examined here are wrong, untrue or inaccurate. The analytical concern is not related to the completeness or truthfulness of these representations, but rather, as David Campbell (2007a: 379) aptly formulates, to the ‘question of what they do, how they function, and the impact of this operation’.

The following section discusses the previous approaches that have been dedicated to questions of representation in the field of International Relations.

Aesthetics and IR

Over the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a growing interest in adopting insights from architecture, art, film, literature, music, painting, photography and popular culture as means by which to rethink and critically engage areas that are central to the discipline and its subject: war and peace, conflict and cooperation. This increasing interest has prompted Roland Bleiker to speak, in 2001, of an actual ‘aesthetic turn’ in international political theory (Bleiker 2001). This turn towards aesthetics coincides with the surge in the number of studies concerned with visual culture and visual rhetoric since the mid-1990s (cf. Hariman/Lucaites 2007; see also, Elkins 2003; Evans/Hall 1999; Kress/van Leuwen 2006; Mirzoeff 1999; Mitchell 1994).

That aesthetics can have an impact on, or themselves become part of (international) politics, is shown by a brief look at two episodes that recently occurred in East Asia. In December 2009, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade denied entry visas to five North Korean artists who had been commissioned to exhibit their paintings at an art show in Queensland. The department explained that the artists’ studio would produce ‘propaganda aimed at glorifying and supporting the North Korean regime’, and further stated that the denial of visas was part of its response to North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons development programme (Glionna 2009a). In the end, the paintings were exhibited, but their creators’ entry forbidden (cf. Shim 2011).

Another example is the ban of instrumental music with titles allegedly praising North Korea, which South Korea’s Supreme Court (as well as the government and the military) said, in November 2010, would violate a domestic law known as the National Security Act (Kim EJ 2010). What is interesting in this episode is that a musical composition without lyrics – comprising 14 MP3 music files on a USB storage device, for which its owner was sentenced to two years in jail – came to be seen as a threat to national security. While both examples show that censorship, restraint and intolerance are not only restricted to the usual suspect, North Korea, they also offer glimpses of how allegedly apolitical pieces of art can also be perceived as being tied to the larger questions of domestic and international politics.

In contrast to mainstream theories of IR such as (neo)realism, (neo)liberalism and constructivism – which mostly rely on official documents, interviews, speeches, statements and statistics for their inquiry – aesthetic approaches also draw on alternative sources – including movies, images and poetry – to provide a different understanding of the realities, problems and conditions of world politics (Bleiker 2009; Danchev/Lisle 2009). The emerging interest in the relationship between the political and the visual is reflected in an increasing number of authors who (get) publish(ed) in special issues or sections of IR books, as well as in edited volumes and journals – including Alternatives, Millennium, International Political Sociology, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Studies and Security Dialogue. This body of work comprises a wide range of interdisciplinary relationships and overlapping topics; some of the included studies are:

• Visuality, representation and international politics (for example, Campbell 2007a; Debrix/Weber 2003; Dodds 2007; MacDonald 2006; MacDonald et al. 2010; O’Loughlin 2010; Ó Tuathail 1996; Shim/Nabers 2012)

• Aesthetic approaches and their relationship to the discipline of IR (for example, Bleiker 2001, 2009; Danchev/Lisle 2009; Neumann 2001; Sylvester 2001, 2009)

• Aesthetics and global security (for example, Amoore 2007; Bleiker 2006; Campbell 2003a, 2003b, 2011a; Der Derian 2001, 2009; Kennedy 2008, 2009; Möller 2007; Shapiro 1997; Weber 2006)

• Photography, atrocity and human suffering (for example, Bleiker/Kay 2007; Campbell 2003c, 2004, 2011b; Dauphinée 2007; Laustsen 2008; Möller 2009, 2010)

• Visuality and securitization (for example, Campbell/Shapiro 2007; Hansen 2011; Williams 2003)

• Media, foreign policy and political intervention (for example, Dauber 2001; Eisensee/Strömberg 2007; Gilboa 2005; Livingston/Eachus 1995; Perlmutter 1998, 2005; Robinson 1999, 2001)

• Aesthetic politics (for example, Ankersmit 1997; Shapiro 1988, 1999), and

• Identity, emotion, trauma and memory (for example, Bell 2010; Bleiker/Hutchinson 2008; Crawford 2000; Edkins 2003; Mercer 2006; Ross 2006; Shapiro 2008).

The examples show that examinations of the relationship between the issue of representation, political practices and questions of global politics have proliferated significantly in the discipline of International Relations in recent years. Also, IR monographs and teaching books increasingly use visuals specifically as pedagogical tools to enhance their didactical and educational effects on students, or to engage in questions of (visual) representation as a way to reflect on important problems in international politics. Recent examples are: Roland Bleiker’s (2009) Aesthetics and World Politics, Alex Danchev’s On Art and War and Terror (2011), Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss’s (2009) Global Politics: A New Introduction and Cynthia Weber’s (2009) International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction.

One of the effects of the inclusion of images – and of their use as pedagogy – is the establishing of a connection between the visual dimension of global politics and the everyday. Weber, for instance, turns to popular films to rethink the links between IR theory and the everyday lives of people. Conceived of as narrative spaces of visual culture, popular cinematic representation allows us to understand how – as Weber calls it – ‘IR myths’, which provide the truth conditions for IR theories, become common and accepted IR beliefs. Above all, popular films can help to reveal ‘the everyday connections between “the popular” and “the political”’ (Weber 2009: 9).

Instead of addressing the role of the visual in the everyday, as for instance Weber does, this book, or at least a considerable part of it, engages instead with visuals of the everyday and their linkages to the international and the political. In general, the connection between the everyday and the political/international seems to have in recent years received increasing attention in critical IR and geopolitical thinking (see, for example, Blunt 2005; Enloe 2011; Gorman-Murray/Dowling 2007; Guillaume 2011; Pain/Smith 2008; Salter 2011; Schwartz/Ryan 2003). This book conceives of images – whether photographs of everyday life or satellite pictures – as a site of international political inquiry, thus providing a framework by which to approach and understand international relations.

While in the case of satellite imagery, as is shown later, the geopolitical relevance of vision and visuality appears obvious, because, for instance, satellite images inform the decision-making processes of governments, intelligence agencies and military authorities, this might not be the case at first sight with photography of daily life. However, and in an attempt to add to the understanding of conceiving of the international in terms of the everyday, it will be shown that issues of daily life – that is, conditions of living, dwelling and being – carry significant weight in governmental and non-governmental approaches to North Korea. It is, therefore, important to ask how the outside world gets an idea of North Korea’s everyday.

The analytical focus on aesthetic approaches is also shared by some subfields of IR – including postcolonialism and critical geopolitics. Postcolonial studies examine the ways in which ‘Western’ knowledge systems and moral concepts have come to dominate (certain parts of) the world (Grovogui 2007; Loomba 1998; Said 1978; Sharpe 2009; Spivak 1988). They show how travellers’ tales, exhibitions, novels, paintings and photographs have played an essential role in European and North American imaginations about ‘Africa’, ‘Asia’, ‘Latin America’ and the ‘Orient’. For instance, during the colonial expansions by European states in the nineteenth century a growing number of photographers accompanied troops and explorers from the major powers. They captured views of foreign lands such as China, India, the Middle East and North Africa, which stressed the exotic and mysterious appearance of the landscape, architecture and people. In this way, photography helped to legitimize the colonial rule of European states (Marien 2002: 103).

Critical geopolitics, also sometimes referred to as political geography, emerged in the early 1990s, and attempts to bridge the disciplines of Geography and International Relations (Power/Campbell 2010). Pioneering works by John Agnew (1997), Simon Dalby (1990), Neil Smith (1991) and Gearoid Ó Tuathail (1996) highlighted emerging questions about how notions of space, territoriality and geopolitical orders are embedded in, and enacted through, specific linguistic and visual practices such as cartography, satellite imagery and geographical information systems (for the burgeoning literature on political geography, see Albert et al. 2006; Agnew et al. 2003; Dodds 2007; Hughes 2007; MacDonald 2006; Rose 2003).

Clear distinctions between postcolonial studies, critical geopolitics and aesthetic IR approaches are not easy to sustain – not least, since many critical scholars such as David Campbell, James Der Derian, Roxanne Doty and Michael Shapiro operate at the intersections of those fields. However, and at the risk of gross oversimplification, a distinctive feature of critical geopolitics in contrast to aesthetic IR approaches is its central concern with the organization and production of (national) space, region and territory, while postcolonial studies examine the politics of the externally-imposed constraints to self-determination and self-representation. However, all approaches may have in common their ‘critical’ stance, in that they challenge established theories and practices of understanding local, regional and/or global phenomena (cf. Edkins/Vaughan-Williams 2009; see also, Cox 1981).

Critical approaches in IR are rooted in so-called postmodern or poststructuralist thinking, which entered the field in the 1980s with the works of Richard Ashley (1984), James Der Derian (1987), Michael Shapiro (1981; Der Derian/Shapiro 1989) and R. B. J. Walker (1987). Usually the terms ‘postmodernism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ are used interchangeably in IR, although, as Campbell (2007b: 211–12) stresses, there are some differences between them. To determine the specific characteristics of postmodernism and poststructuralism it is useful to look briefly at the ideas and the values to which they actually refer: modernism and structuralism.

Modernism is said to allude to a particular mindset related to European and US societies, beginning from the late nineteenth continuing through to the mid-twentieth century. Modernism emerged in an aesthetic context of architecture, art, literature, music and painting, and is profoundly characterized by medical, scientific and technological innovations during that period (Campbell 2007b: 211). These transformations challenged everyday life conceptions about the way the material world functioned and reflected the impact of these developments on the political, economic and cultural order of what were now ‘modern’ societies (Thompson 2004). Modernism can be conceived of more broadly as being an epoch, one marked by specific developments that were related to changes in science, technology and society – with postmodernism being a critical response to these modern transformations.

In contrast, structuralism refers to a linguistic theory of meaning and is usually associated with Swiss semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure. According to Saussure, language has to be considered a system – or structure – of signs, which is determined by internal relationships between these signs and not through a pre-given external reality. A sign is characterized by its form and content, which he calls signifier (‘word’) and signified (‘concept’). The relationship of both is contingent and arbitrary and the result of socio-historical conventions, whereby specific meanings were attached to specific sounds. Important to note is that the meaning of a sign is derived from its fixed structural position as it relates to other signs in a language (Chandler 2007; Jorgensen/Phillips 2002). With the basic claim of structuralist theory that people’s everyday activities are, like language, bound to universal rules equivalent to syntax and grammar, it reveals a particular (scientific) understanding through which these rules can be uncovered, mapped and compared. Poststructuralists argue against the notion of language as a fixed structure independent of context; they, in semiotic terms, contend that the meaning of signs is affected by the particular context in which they are used, so that the structure of language itself can be changed.

While postmodernism and poststructuralism draw on different historical conditions of emergence, both, however, refer in IR to ‘critical’ standpoints, which were mainly inspired by the thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva (cf. Edkins/Vaughan-Williams 2009). The works of the abovementioned pioneers like Ashley, Shapiro and Walker in the 1980s were such a response to the, at that time, dominant theories of realism and neorealism, intended to demonstrate how their rationalist assumptions determined the conditions, or more precisely confines, of speaking and writing about international politics. By this time, the field of IR was (and to some measure continues to be – see Smith 2000; Hagmann/Biersteker 2011) dominated by American theorists such as Robert O. Keohane, John Mearsheimer, Joseph Nye and Kenneth Waltz who developed and advanced rationalist theories and models of world politics: neorealism and neoliberalism.

Contemporary IR studies on East Asian security relations are a good example of the continuing efficacy and potency of rationalist models. Current research on the so-called Six-Party Talks – a multilateral security forum consisting of China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States, that aims at the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula – focus mainly either on assessing its potential, prospects and implications of institutionalization processes (for example, Cerami 2005; Choi 2006; Choo 2005; Kim KS 2007; Park HJ 2007; Pritchard 2004), on analysing the roles, strategies and policies among the parties (for example, Ashizawa 2006; Deng 2006; Joo SH 2004; Joo/Kwak 2007) or on evaluating the results with regard to the compliance with the Six-Party agreements and the likelihood of finding a solution for the various security concerns (for example, Cotton 2007; Koh YH 2005; Park J. S. 2005).

While differing on the probability of there being cooperation among states due to the anarchic order of the international system, something which is identified by neorealists and neoliberalists alike as being the central organizing principle of state-to-state relations, they do agree on a meta-theoretical level in that they believe in the possibility of discovering an objective truth by the application of scientific methods and value-free theories. A good example of this understanding is an analogy to the famous Italian renaissance sculptor Michelangelo. Similar to the artist’s claim that his sculpture David was always already present in the stone and it only had to be freed, such positivist accounts assert that meaning and truth lie intrinsically in the things themselves. Maintaining that the social sciences in general, and IR in particular, can be investigated in the same way as the natural sciences, positivist accounts attempt to verify or falsify facts, to test theories and hypotheses through empirical measuring and postulate the existence of universal cause–effect regularities which can be discovered – or, to put it in Michelangelo’s terms, which simply have to be carved out from the political and social world (Booth et al. 1996; Brown/Ainley 2009; Dunne et al. 2007).

Arguing against these assumptions are poststructuralist positions, which refute the notion of a totalizing approach to international relations and outline how the theoretical assumptions of rationalists have been elevated to the status of common sense. They also challenge the starting point of mainstream rationalist theories, by pointing out their historically contingent conditions of emergence. Among others, postructuralists ask how these theories constructed and represented knowledge of the world and how they tended to favour an explanation of the international system that mirrored the interests of those who dominated the field at the time. For instance, early radical scholars like Noam Chomsky have explored the close links between the academic discipline of IR and state leaderships, particularly in the United States, and have highlighted how the dominant political preferences of governments have helped one theoretical approach – like realism in the 1960s and 1970s – to prevail over the others (Burchill/Linklater 2009: 15).

As a result of the critique of mainstream theorizing, a major debate occurred in the 1990s between positivist and postpositivist perspectives in IR. Also known as an exchange between rationalist and reflectivist positions – due to the now famous address of Robert Keohane at the 1988 annual convention of the International Studies Association – the epistemology and methodology of IR in particular, as well as the nature and purpose of theory and theorizing in general, were the central points of contention. Occasionally referred to as the ‘fourth great debate’ of the field – after the divide between idealists and realists in the 1930s and 1940s over the role of international institutions and their possible involvement in the prevention of war, the controversy between realists and behaviourists in the 1950s and 1960s over interpretive-hermeneutic and scientific methodologies and the so-called inter-paradigm debate beginning in the 1970s among realists, pluralists and Marxists over the problem of theory selection¹ – important questions that emerged as a consequence of the dispute encompassed how reality ‘out there’ can be known, what counts as knowledge and whether all knowledge-producing theories are necessarily political because they establish narratives of the world that privilege particular interests and marginalize others (Schmidt 2002; Smith 2007).

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s several authors have called for the field to move beyond the positivism–postpositivism divide. Perhaps the most prominent figure in this has been Alexander Wendt (1999), with his landmark publication Social Theory of International Politics, wherein he attempted to occupy a middle ground – the so-called via media – between rationalist and reflectivist positions (see also, Adler 1997). However, W...