Risk conflation

As seen from the discussion of Japan’s framing of the DPRK following the 1998 Taepodong launch, one of the clearest measures of how risks have been recalibrated by Japan’s policy makers can be viewed through their responses to North Korean missile tests. The events that unfolded during 2006, however, presented a second, additional element, with which risks framed in the context of the DPRK’s weapons programs could be further compounded and emphasized. In addition to the multiple rocket launches in July, which served to remind and reconfirm the risks framed against Kim Jong-Il’s provocative regime, the nuclear test in October of the same year elevated their calibration to a yet higher level. ¹ Once again this can be observed across a sphere that intersects the state, market, and society—mediated to the citizen through a broad range of information sources; including mainstream newspapers, television, and other electronic sources. Indeed, illustrative of this process was the combination of (then first-time) Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s unilateral statements regarding Japan’s worsening security environment, as a result of the risks posed to it by a range of North Korean threats, and the right-of-center print media’s ratcheting-up of the mediation of risks within the public sphere. This was epitomized by the Yomiuri Shimbun in an editorial ultimately laying the blame at Pyongyang’s door for Japan being in its “worst security environment since the end of the Second World War” (January 4, 2007: 3). In addition, television coverage of the issues surrounding the DPRK’s provocations also fanned the flames of risk inflation. In the week following the nuclear test, coverage of North Korea stories boasted seven times the air-time of their nearest rival issues (Umeda, 2007: 21).