Why I report North Korea to Chinese Reader-My Lecture at Hokkaido University

In 2005 I worked for Youth Reference, a sub-newspaper of China Youth Daily. It’s a newspaper that specializes in international news like the Global Times. Of course our values and style were different from the Global Times. At that time, I was covering the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. In the process of checking the information, I heard for the first time that a Japanese reporter had recognized Kim Jong-nam of North Korea. It was at the Beijing Capital International Airport on September 25, 2004, when three Japanese journalists recognized Kim Jong Nam and established contact. Years later I had the pleasure of interviewing one of them, Mr. Yoji Gomi of Tokyo Shimbun. At that time I was envious, jealous and a bit

 depressed about my Japanese counterpart seniors. After all, it was at Beijing’s Capital Airport. Where were the Chinese journalists.

In February 2017, I was working at Caixin’s World Speak. When I heard the news that Kim Jong Nam had been assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, it just so happened that we had a local contributing writer, a young girl. I told her to hurry and tak

e a taxi to the scene, and at the same time told her to find a way to contact the security guards at the airport 

to get the CCTV footage, and spend as much as she wanted, and I’d figure out a way to get the money.

In my heart, I am competing with my Japanese counterparts. Based on past experience, the odds are that the live surveillance was gotten by the Japanese media. It was also Fuji TV that got it in the end. I’m sorry about that. Our contributing writer is a young lass who doesn’t quite understand the story. She doesn’t seem to have the will to break through to get the footage by any means necessary.

This is where Japanese journalists are powerful.

Okay, that’s the end of the boot-licking session. Let’s get down to business.

Around 2005-2007, the most popular international stories in China were China-Japan news. The Prime Minister’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Diaoyu/Magakure Islands issue, anti-Japanese marches, etc. were the hot topics at that time. I thought at the time that the Chinese public was too lacking in the spirit of listening and research. Few people really cared about the truth of the Sino-Japanese dispute, let alone listening to and understanding what the Japanese side was thinking.

At that time, I also interviewed some people who advocated the China threat theory, some Japanese politicians and so on. The purpose was to let readers hear Japan’s voice and understand the country. At one time, I wanted to build personal relationships with politicians like Japanese journalists. Gradually, however, I lost interest in this kind of international reporting. I began to realize that the so-called Sino-Japanese relationship is not so much a relationship between China and Japan. I realized that the so-called Sino-Japanese relationship was not so much a relationship between China and Japan as it was a relationship between Zhongnanhai and Japan, and that this kind of news had nothing to do with me or my readers.

So to start thinking about the question, what exactly does international news do in mainland China and what is its business logic?

And to answer this question, it is necessary to answer a more fundamental question, what is the business logic of the news industry and what do journalists do in mainland China in the 21st century. Without a clear answer to this question, I don’t think there is any way to answer the question of international news coverage.

First of all, it is clear to everyone that Chinese journalism and Chinese journalists are not the same thing as Japanese journalism and Japanese journalists. The Chinese news industry, needs to accomplish three often contradictory jobs. The first job is political, getting power to accept it. The second job is commercial, getting capital to accept it. The third is reporting, to get readers to accept it. If you can’t do all three at the same time, there’s no room for you to survive. But at the same time, from a historical point of view, there is a hidden thread that has continued to be passed on to Chinese journalists over the past hundred years, from generation to generation, in the pursuit of reporting the truth, in the pursuit of criticizing power, and in the pursuit of providing consulting services for public discussion. This pursuit is consistent with their journalistic counterparts in Japan or other countries around the world. Citizens of a country enjoy the right to know and participate in the discussion of public affairs. News reporting is an important manifestation of citizens’ exercise of their rights. There is no way for China’s media to be free from the influence of power and capital, but there was a time when journalists had a choice in media platforms. For example, refusing to be a propaganda tool, refusing to write public relations articles, refusing to participate in activities to get red envelopes. I think this matter is very important.

Everyone pushes investigative reporting. I also know several friends who do a great job with investigative reporting. They’re all great. They’re all more famous than I am, and they’ve accomplished more than I have. But I also think they don’t understand international journalism and what I’m looking for in international journalism.

In China, investigative reporting does not ask questions that reflect on the legitimacy of power-society relations. It presupposes that in the People’s Republic of China, the public has a natural right to know. Then it pretends that we are a civil society and pretends that we have the right to know, so journalists find out the truth for the public, pursue the truth, and hold the people involved accountable. Then the problem is solved. The government adjusts its policies, and we win. Society progresses.

International journalism cannot do that. International journalism starts by asking more sensitive but very important questions.

Let me give you an example, if I’m a Russian journalist and I cover international news. Let’s say that Zelensky has just become the president of Ukraine and Putin and Zelensky meet and shake hands. I then report to my readers that this marks how our country’s relations with Ukraine are going. Then what about when the Russia-Ukraine war came. I cannot accept that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine. My readers and I did not authorize the government to do such a thing. My values are even less in favor of such a thing. So, from the beginning I’m going to say that Putin and Zelensky meeting is the Russian government engaging in relations with the Ukrainian government. By the time we get to the Russo-Ukrainian war, I can continue that principle that it was the Russian government invading Ukraine.

So the first order of business in international reporting, in my view, is to ask three questions, first, what is a modern sovereign state. What is China, for example, and what is the relationship between the individual and the state in this country. For example, what is the relationship between Zhongnanhai – the highest authority in China – and me. Third, how the relationship between the state and the state affects the individual. What is the relationship between Zhongnanhai, which is at war with others, and me.

I’m going to do journalism that responds to the three issues mentioned earlier. I call it the problem of national outlook. It’s reasonable for investigative journalism to pretend that the reader is a citizen, to pretend that there’s a public discussion going on. But it’s not okay for an international reporter to do that. I can’t pretend that we’re a democracy with a civil society and that I authorized the Kremlin to invade Ukraine. Yes, I’m talking about Russia, not China.

It is with these thoughts in mind that since joining Southern Weekend in 2010, I have shifted my focus to reporting on the topic of recent modernization in other late-developing countries, to provide my readers with an understanding of the world and the necessary references, and I want to show my readers that the world is not only about the U.S., Japan, and Russia, but also about a lot of strange and weird countries. I would cover countries like India and Myanmar, and one that I continued to focus on from 2010 through 2017 during my time in journalism was North Korea. At that time, it was the late Kim Jong-il to pre-Kim Jong-un period, when North Korea underwent regime change and big changes in society. One feature of this process was that North Korea became more open to China. According to the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), between 2009 and 2012, the number of North Korean visitors to China went from 100,000 to 180,000 people. I have also counted the number of North Korean restaurants in China, and from the change in the number of restaurants and the distribution of cities, the number of North Korean restaurants in China surged from 2012 to 2015, and about 70% of the restaurants appeared in this period. This data is consistent with the previous trend of the number of North Koreans coming to China.

In 2014, as a businessman, I went to Rason, North Korea’s first special economic zone, to research marketization there.In 2017, I visited along the Yalu and Tumen Rivers and joined a rather unusual Chinese tour group to Pyongyang. Of course in Pyongyang we also met Japanese journalists we knew, but just didn’t dare to say hello.

Thanks to a grant from a foundation, I was able to go on an expedition with another friend along the Tumen and Yalu Rivers. It was an unforgettable experience with a lot to gain.

I would also like to say here that compared to the research done by Japanese journalists on North Korea, I have not done enough. I’m just reporting my experience here.

I chose to cover North Korea for several specific reasons.

• The systems of both the DPRK and China are essentially Lenin-Stalin systems, totalizing states. Relationships between people in such states are theoretically defined and governed by centralized power, by bureaucracy. North Korea allows the reader to see what China used to be like, or even, one might say, to see the parts of China that have not substantially changed.
• I would like to pursue the question of whether totalizing states can be reformed or not through reporting. What are the consequences of reform?In 2007, China’s Central Compilation Bureau published a book by Hungarian economist János Kornai called The Socialist System. It’s funny, this compilation bureau is a central organ of the Communist Party. And this book was very reactionary. It basically argues what are the typical political economy phenomena that occur in totalizing countries, like famines, like scarcity of goods, and why. According to this book, reform is useless and bound to fail. And the Chinese intelligentsia at the time was still very favorable to reform. They followed the views of American scholar Coase, Chinese scholar Zhang Wuchang, and Peking University scholar Zhou Qiren. Whether the reform is useful or not, I don’t know.
• Where is Northeast Asia headed. I think this subject is relevant to every reader. It is also relevant to all of you in this room. It is one of the most important issues that everyone should be concerned about. Every big change in Northeast Asia has influenced the direction of East Asia. And the likelihood of another big change in this part of the world is still not small.
• I am concerned about the fate of the border people. Border people are the ones most affected by international relations. There is no way for those in the capital, in the center of the empire, to feel and understand these influences.In 2017, I saw in Yanji, on the border between China and North Korea, that every time you walk along the fields there, you can see a monument with the inscription Revolutionary Martyrs Forever. Later, an old professor at Yanji University told me that in the 1950s, there were many widowed villages in the area. These villages were all border people and were mainly Korean. They lived in misery for most of the last century, which is hard for nationalist cynics on the Internet to understand. It is important to report as much as possible on the experiences of the border people and to convey their perspectives and viewpoints. I think this is important. It’s not just about North Korea, it’s about the phenomenon that occurs with all other border people and all neighboring countries. It is important to try to make mainland Chinese readers think differently and understand how their neighbors think. To see things from the perspective of other civilizations.

Of course, you can’t just talk about all the above reasons when you report in China. There are some realistic conditions to be met in reporting on North Korea. First, readers love to read. It goes without saying that the whole world loves to read North Korean news. The authorities have not completely banned it (once). This thing has been game over. Close proximity and low cost of traveling. The challenges we face in this area are completely unmatched by our Japanese counterparts.

However, the Chinese media has a unique advantage: a special channel of information – the border people. I talk to Chinese businessmen and go with them to meet North Korean businessmen. I also get to visit North Korea on study tours. One more thing, because China and North Korea share a common social system, I think it is easier for Chinese people to understand North Koreans, even more than South Koreans, on certain issues. For example, how to respond to things like traffic police asking for bribes. For example, how to look at the black market. All socialist countries have underground black markets.

I covered North Korea and was lucky enough to catch the change that occurred in North Korea during the late Kim Jong-il period, and I was able to follow that change. This change was a process of acceptance of the market by the North Korean authorities. It is comparable, but not identical, to the phenomenon that occurred in China in the 1980s. Obviously, this conclusion could not be drawn from individual interviews alone, but was the result of multiple interviews, observation from multiple perspectives, and conclusions based on the theory of political economy.

To put it simply, for a long time, until 2009, the DPRK had an underground black market network outside the open control of power. Some necessities of life were circulated on the black market. At that time, the border trade between China and North Korea consisted of North Korean officials doing business with Chinese businessmen. The issues that the officials had to consider were performance and political risks, not business benefits. For the official, in case he lost money, he was responsible for the loss of state assets, so they did not care about things like contracts and credit. Chinese border traders in that period often complained that the North Koreans were not trustworthy, as well as the fact that the train wagons could not come back from the past. I believe that in Shenzhen in the 1980s, Japanese companies should have encountered similar situations when doing business with the Chinese.

Later, the DPRK’s policy was adjusted to allow the emergence of a professional merchant class, but these merchants had to wear chains around their necks. Behind the chain were state-owned clubs, headed by state cadres. In the beginning it should have been mainly military cadres. When Kim Jong-un came to power and beat the generals to it, the chains were transferred to the cadres of the Labor Party.

When professional businessmen do business with Chinese people, they are more professional, follow the rules of business relatively more, and have a sense of business dealings and are more open. When I was in the market at the port of Rojin, the businesswoman I met would wink at me and ask me why I didn’t buy her cigarettes.

The general manager of the travel agency we met in Pyongyang would accompany us to try karaoke in one of those diplomatic clubs that ordinary Pyongyangers can’t get to. I sang Cui Jian, British rock songs, and the other sang My Chinese Heart.

In short, a phenomenon has emerged in which people talk about business and making money, and don’t talk about ideology.

From this we can understand some of the new fashionable neighborhoods that appeared in Pyongyang in the late Kim Jong-il and early Kim Jong-un periods. These were supposed to cater to the new grassroots.

Kim Jong-un’s early political struggles will spill over to these businessmen as well. I have met such people when I interviewed defectors in South Korea. They are a new type of defectors, not like the defectors who fled in the 1990s. Barbara Demick, an American journalist, wrote a book about defectors called We Are the Happiest, but I don’t recall her writing about this new type of defector.

I find it interesting that Chinese businessmen used to be very open in their business and basically didn’t wear chains around their necks. But over the years, the chains have gotten more and more numerous. In that sense, China is moving closer to North Korea.

A few final words.

I also go to other countries to do reporting, but I don’t really like to go to developed countries. I go to places like Libya, Egypt, Iran, India, Burma, and they can also provide Chinese readers with references for understanding modern countries.

I want to tell readers that there are many kinds of countries, some of which can be very broken and chaotic, and some of which, while they sound like countries, can actually be more like pigsties.

I think there is another value in international reporting, which is to discover China’s characteristics through comparison and to give reasonable explanations and speculations.

Whether in developed or developing countries, in cities I can see all kinds of temples, mosques, churches, shrines, I can see community life.

But in China’s big cities, it’s hard to see any of this. between 2001 and today, China’s urbanization rate has gone from 36% to about 70%. Hundreds of millions of people live in cities. This scale of rapid urbanization is also rare in human history. It may be even faster than Japan and Korea back then. However, there are two characteristics of China’s cities, one is that there are many isolation fences, and the other is that the vast majority of urban residents live in neighborhoods. Personally, I don’t think this is a good living experience. It is too different from what I have seen in other countries.

If you go to China again, I suggest that you pay attention to this point. A comparison will show that the present Chinese city is a very special phenomenon in the history of human civilization. I don’t know whether it is good or bad, but I can only say that it is a kind of civilization exploration of human beings.

I don’t know what the benefits of this exploration are, but the costs should be obvious.

The last thing I want to say is that, unfortunately, after 2017, I chose to give up. Because, I think the journalism industry ceases to exist when the public discourse has disappeared. I am neither going to be a propaganda machine nor do PR for companies. There is no longer a proper Chinese media in China that can support me to do the kind of reporting I want to do. It’s even less likely to support me to write large works. This is very sad. But perhaps the more the time comes, the more the need to keep doing something, who knows?

Thank you all.