What you should know about North Korea and their nuclear weapons threats

Teen Vogue may not be the first place one would ordinarily think of when it comes to an article about North Korea and nuclear weapons—especially one that takes on the widespread trope in the US media that North Korea is the only unpredictable player on the Korean peninsula these days.

But Sharon Squassoni of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board did exactly that in an OpEd published on April 14 for Teen Vogue, titled “What You Should Know About North Korea and Their Nuclear Weapons Threats.”

The article notes that “the new unpredictability in US actions may be a big new source of nuclear jitters,” and calls for a steady hand in US foreign policy when dealing with North Korea.

Of almost equal interest is the nature of the publication itself, which has been getting plaudits lately from news organizations such as the Washington Post. The Post lauded a Teen Vogue editorial that encouraged readers to be more wary consumers of the news, do their own fact-checking, and search for verified, factual information instead of believing everything on social media.

And the positive media critique comes from overseas as well, including the British Broadcasting Corporation. In an article titled “Teen Vogue surprise! Teenage girls care about politics,” BBC reporter Amelia Butterly wrote that the magazine’s “target audience is the same group of people who are frequently dismissed for having zero attention span or being obsessed with selfies. But these same people tend to be better educated than their grandparents, while facing challenging job prospects. And as a group, they are more racially and socially diverse.”

Butterly also noted that they also seem more engaged—both in the US and the UK—citing a London School of Economics report that said that during the EU referendum, young people turned out in extraordinary numbers, with the highest youth vote in two decades.