Korea: Amid Public Tension, North and South Push for Unification through the Digital Backchannels
Tensions have been at a pitch on the Korean peninsula since the North conducted a nuclear test in early January. The UN Security Council re-imposed sanctions in March, but they’ve done little to deter Pyongyang as it continues to pepper the South and Japan with military provocations: a rocket launch here, a missile test there. The agreement reached last month between South Korea and the United States to deploy an advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in the South was met with predictable fury north of the DMZ; Pyongyang warned the deal would prompt a “physical response” and “counter-actions,” and it has stayed good to its word, launching a series of missile tests over the last month. The latest of these came last week, when the North launched a Rodong missile that landed 155 miles off the coast of Japan — the closest a North Korean missile has come to its eastern neighbor since 1998.
Amid these renewed provocations, it’s little wonder South Korea is sounding downbeat about the prospects for fresh cooperation with the North. Noting that it seems “very hard to induce Pyongyang to desert its nuclear ambitions,” South Korea’s Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo argued last month that for now, the South’s best approach is not to sit down and attempt to engage in dialogue, but to pursue instead a kind of attentisme in the hope that harsh UN sanctions will compel Pyongyang to soften its rebooted belligerence.
Amid this apparent frostiness in the relationship between the North and the South, Predata’s signals show that there has in fact been a significant intensification in the effort to promote the cause of unification, both north and south of the DMZ, since the beginning of the year. There are 55 sources in Predata’s Korea unification signal for North Korea (orange below), and 38 in the signal for South Korea (green below). The sources included in the signals are YouTube videos and Twitter accounts associated with public broadcasters and government agencies (state TV in the North, the YouTube channels of the unification ministry and the president in the South), and they all push a pro-unification line. The uptick in activity in both signals since the beginning of the year can be seen below (the North’s January nuclear test and last week’s Japan-directed missile test are also labeled).
The uptick has been particularly strong in South Korea, suggesting the government is beginning to boost efforts to raise awareness of the issue in the digital arena — a pressing concern amid fears the younger generation is losing its passion for what was once a self-evident policy mission for any government in Seoul.
The post-nuclear test increase in the North Korean signal is less pronounced, but given the lack of internet access north of the DMZ it’s perhaps no surprise that the videos used to generate the signal have been little viewed. More interesting is the fact that 28 of the 55 sources used in the signal date from this year: even as it continues to rail against the imagined aggressions of its enemies and fire off missiles with little apparent regard for the diplomatic consequences, the government in Pyongyang is quietly intensifying a domestic propaganda campaign to build support for unification. Only five of the 28 pro-unification videos uploaded to YouTube by the North Korean government broadcaster this year are explicitly critical of the government in Seoul.
The North’s military provocations and the South’s noticeably cooler tone in public diplomacy both suggest we are traversing a period of routine estrangement in relations on the Korean peninsula. The digital evidence suggests efforts to boost popular enthusiasm for reunification, on both sides of the DMZ, are more intense than ever. Fangs bared in public, both states on the Korean peninsula are pushing a far more conciliatory narrative on unification through the digital backchannels.
