The More Avid Historian? A Comparison between Kim Jong Il’s and Kim Jong Un’s Uses and Usage Rates of the Korean War as a Heuristic in Korean Central News Agency, 1998-2018

Abstract

Purpose: While many scholars have traced how the Kim regimes merged the Korean War into North Korea’s national narrative, no one has conducted a systematic study of how the Kims subsequently wielded the civil war story to advance their policy objectives. The purpose of this paper is to compare how and how often Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un reference the Korean War between 1998 and 2018 in pursuit of their policy goals.

Design, Methodology, Approach: Drawing from the literature on availability and representative heuristics, this paper predicts that Kim Jong Un will reference the Korean War more often than Kim Jong Il will. To test that theory, this paper applies quantitative content analysis to KCNA articles between 1998 and 2018 to determine how often KCNA under both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un cite the Korean War. Then, this paper applies Yuen Foon Khong’s analytical framework (2009) to assess how the two Kims used the Korean War for diagnosis, advocacy, and justification in policy decisions.

Findings: The results confirm the author’s theory on who uses the Korean War more often: KCNA under Kim Jong Un highlights the Korean War more frequently by a factor of 1.8 than the news outlet does under Kim Jong Il. In addition, the Kims combined wield the Korean War most often to advocate policy positions.

Practical Implications: This study confirms the utility of the availability and representative heuristics in understanding how Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Il perceive their environment. The study also provides support that the heuristics are useful for predicting how individuals might behave in the presence of certain conditions. Based on these findings, the study observes there are both troubling and useful implications for policymakers to leverage awareness of these operating heuristics in the mind of North Korean leaders.

Originality, Value: This paper makes an original contribution to the understanding of the frequency and use of the Korean War by North Korean leaders. Using a quantitative and qualitative approach, this paper provides a framework which can be applied to extract new insights into North Korea across wider periods and different topics. This paper also contributes to the literature of how policymakers use history as a tool to advance their objectives.