The Los Angeles Times:
In North Korea, missiles and nuclear bombs are more than a means of national defense — they are, for broad segments of the public, objects of near-religious devotion.
In Pyongyang, the country’s capital, missiles feature constantly in newspapers and on television. They emerge from flower pots in floral exhibitions; loom large in public mosaics; and adorn propaganda posters in factories, farms and schools. They’re often depicted in mid-flight, framed by bold militaristic slogans.
North Korea is gradually developing the capability to fit a nuclear device on an intercontinental ballistic missile, a technology that could one day enable it to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S., and any other nation that might threaten the survival of the Kim family dynasty.
Yet a close reading of the country’s propaganda suggests that its goals may be more ambitious — and more aggressive in nature — than foreign observers often assume.
One longtime analyst of the secretive country’s murky ideology says it’s become clear that North Korea’s rulers have come to consider nuclear capability not just a means of defense, but the only way of achieving their most important goal: to rid South Korea of U.S. troops, and reunite the Korean peninsula on their own terms.
“North Korea is a radical nationalist state and it’s committed to anything that anybody in North Korea’s position would be — which is the reunification of the [Korean] race, and the reunification of the homeland,” said B.R. Myers, a professor at Dongseo University in South Korea who has spent years studying North Korean propaganda and ideology.
