A quantitative, corpus-based approach is most illuminating for describing collocational and other recurrent patterns associated with specific lexical items across an entire corpus, while a qualitative, critical discourse analysis approach is best suited for scrutinising specific stretches of text at various levels. By incorporating both approaches, this study examines US news stories published in mainstream media with an attempt to identify specific discursive practices relating to North Korea. The analysis reveals that three US media outlets (CNN, Newsweek and The New York Times) divide the world into certain sets of countries, and that being pro- or anti-USA might have an impact on which country is associated with North Korea.