All the Trouble in the World: North Korea Edition
I’ve written quite a bit about North Korea over the years, but let’s start off this morning with Michael Mazza and seven scenarios for the DPRK’s immediate future:
1. Kim Jong-un, Jong-il’s youngest son, steps quickly and easily into his father’s shoes. All goes swimmingly.
2. Kim Jong-il adviser Jang Song-taek acts as regent to the younger Kim and rules effectively while Jong-un continues to hone his chops in Pyongyang.
3. North Korea launches artillery attacks against the South.
4. North Korea tests a nuclear device.
5. Factional in-fighting will prevent any individual or group from exercising effective control.
6. Kim Jong-il’s death was not natural as reported. Kim Jong-un and other members of the Kim family may be next on the hit-list.
7. The additional uncertainty caused by Kim’s death drives segments of an already hungry, malnourished population over the edge. North Koreans head for the Chinese border in droves.
Left out: Another strongman could emerge to replace the Kim dynasty and hold the country together. Probably from the Army, certainly with Stalinesque purges.
Kim Jong Young-un is only 28. We think. We know he was promoted to general recently, and started wearing big boy pants. What has he been doing? Wielding power behind-the-scenes and forging alliances and shooting random ministers to ensure a smooth transition (and keeping) of power?
Again, we just don’t know.
But there certainly doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that. What there is evidence of, is that the Party is losing control in the provinces abutting China. And that corruption has grown much worse, since the Party is low on goodies to hand out to loyal members. Smuggling — goods and humans — is the only thing keeping things going, but even that’s not enough.
So let’s take a look at the scenarios.
Number 1 is what everybody in the Party wants. It’s also almost certainly impossible.
Number 6 strikes me as the least likely. Kim Jong-il had been dying for a very long time. His death was neither sudden nor surprising, so why kill him now, when his presence is the only thing ensuring that your clique remains in power? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but not likely.
Number 4 is a variation on Number 3, and we have to file them both under “anything can happen.” I don’t expect a real shooting war with the South, as that would be a 100% guarantee that the North ceases to exist.
Number 2 is what the Party would accept. Dynasty assured, reliable regent in place. Surely this is what they’ll work for. However, this one might be obviated by Number 5. The economy will continue to slide, forcing the various cliques and circles to fight over a shrinking pie.
So Number 5 would make Number 7 almost inevitable.
Which brings us to my addition, Number 8: Chinese paratroopers in Pyongyang. And pretty much everywhere else, too.
That might seem a little extreme. Given the local geopolitical and humanitarian realities, it also might be the most desirable. At least until a “4+2” type of conference can settle on the terms of Korean reunification.
But honestly, trying to predict anything about North Korea is a fool’s game. Kim Jong-un might just hold the place together. Or the generals and party bosses might decide to get out while the getting is good. If there’s anything left in the Treasury (including counterfeit U.S. hundred-dollar bills), then maybe we’ll see all-new buyers of Riviera condos in the not-too-distant future. But that kind of looting has to be done judiciously, or you risk general societal collapse before you make it to the exits. The current Egyptian junta is showing just the way to do it. Careful notes are being taken in Pyongyang, I’m sure.
But my gut tells me that North Korea will collapse, because it has been collapsing, slowly, under Kim Jong-il. I just don’t see how a 28-year-old with apparently little experience is going to accomplish anything better than his old man. Most likely, the rot will accelerate.
And it won’t be pretty. As I wrote more than eight years ago:
South Korea has fewer than 50 million people, and while they’ve made great strides, their per capita income is still only up to that of modern Poland. They aren’t poor, but they aren’t nearly as rich as West Germany was. In addition, their economy isn’t as mature or robust, as the Asian Financial Crisis of a couple years back showed.
Up north are 22 million of their starving brethren. Before the Communist dictatorship, they lived a brutal existence as virtual slaves of Japan. “Chosen,” as Tokyo called Korea, was annexed by the Japanese Empire 93 years ago. It’s safe to say that there is no one in North Korea with any experience living in a politically modern, free, democratic, or tolerant state. Travel is forbidden. Only a small handful of South Koreans are allowed north. There is only one radio station, and it runs nothing but the foulest sort of propaganda. And according to a story in US News & World Report a few weeks ago, North Korea even has concentration camps bigger than the District of Columbia.
Through no fault of their own, the people of North Korea simply aren’t ready to enter the modern world, and South Korea can’t afford to feed, house, re-educate, and re-civilize them all.
Whether or not there’s a war, when North Korea collapses there’s going to be a humanitarian crisis on a scale the world has never seen — 22 million scared, hungry, and desperate people left without any semblance of anything familiar.
This is why I say, given the other realities on the ground, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army might be the best hope for the people of North Korea.
Also see: North Korea on YouTube and Last Stop on the Dear Leader Express.
Are you being sarcastic? Given the chaos in Egypt, I’d say the junta is failing miserably at “judiciously” pilfering the state treasury.
I’ve never seen it done better. It’s still messy, but textbook perfect. The junta is keeping the lid on the boiling pot just enough to let them pilfer and skedaddle.
I dunno. Seems like they’re going to hell in a hand basket rather quickly. I think far fewer of the kleptocracy are going to escape with their lives than you believe.
We’ll see. Regardless, the ultimate outcome will still be a total sh*tstorm of problems for the region. And by extension–us.
Remember back a years ago when the PRC was doing some rather elaborate Naval exercises along the shangdong penninsula and more than a few of us speculated that it was about preparing for an invasion of North Korea?
Its all very serious to be sure, but just I cant resist reminding everyone that:
“You are worthless Arec Bawdwin!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOXhGbwdm0
Who we need now: MATT DAMON.
You think these cats know something we dont know?:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/8957669/North-Korean-border-guards-flee-to-China.html
From December 15th, good intel on the situation on the NK border with China:
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/korea/articles/20111215.aspx
Falling morale and discipline in the ranks? You know if you cant maintain control of your own military inside the worlds most oppressive police state…
Thanks for the reminder – I meant to link that in the graf about corruption. Done now.
http://www.loansafe.org/north-korea-buying-foreign-currency-to-boost-domestic-economy
North Korean use of foreign currency has nothing to do with domestic economic needs, it has almost everything to do with ruling class elites and their own economic needs. This article says there has been a spike in recent months of NK purchase of foreign currency, tells me that there is some evidence here that the ruling class is packing its bags.
Number 8: PAR-TAY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNBfBr-OGU
And remember, in North Korea you don’t have to find the party because the party finds you!
North Korea’s per capita income is less than $1800 per annum, while South Korea’s is about $20,000.
Chronic starvation and malnutrition in North Korea means that majority of the population is physically stunted and cognitively impaired.
This cognitive impairment caused by malnutrition at critical brain development stages is irreversible.
There will be no unification of N and S as there was between E and W Germany.
The situation in N Korea is hopeless until a new generation of well feed children reaches adulthood.
It is going to a catastrophe on the scale of the Black Death in Europe
–with 1/2 to 2/3 of the population dying of famine and disease.
The main task for the rest of the world is to secure and /or destroy N Koreas nuclear capabilities before it is too late.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2729531.ece
Snip…
Even though Beijing stepped in to fill the vacuum the Soviet Union had left, its aid was modest: the real cash came from illegal trade with the flourishing Chinese cities across the border.
Behind the militaristic façade, the South Korea-based Russian scholar Andrei Lankov observed in a thoughtful essay written earlier this year that the state steadily lost authority. In the last two decades, Dr. Lankov wrote, the state lost “its ability (perhaps also its will) to control the daily activities of its subjects as well as how they made a living.”
The American scholar Patrick Chovanec, who visited some of North Korea’s least-accessible regions last summer, wrote: “One thing that really surprised me was the number of luxury sedans and SUVs, brands like BMWs and Mercedes, on the city streets.” “Obviously,” he concluded, “somebody has cash.”
In North Korea, Kim Jong-il has left behind, formal power still lies with a caste of military officers and bureaucrats — but economic influence now rests with a new semi-legal merchant class. “North Korean society,” Dr. Lankov observed, “has become defined by one’s relationship to money, not by one’s relationship to the bureaucracy.
“Money talks,” and for better or worse, in North Korea, money talks ever louder.”
…End Snip
“Kim Jong-il’s manifesto on juche formally repudiated Marxism-Leninism in 1996; the preamble to the 2009 constitution left out all mention of socialism, referring only to the ruling family. ”
Did not know that they repudiated marxism-leninism. So they’ve basically decided to just go back to a feudal society?
Thanks for the link.
China doesn’t want 22 million starving Koreans flooding the country, and I don’t think they wouldn’t hesitate to use the machine gun.
South Korea can’t afford reunification, and the US is broke as well. Japan’s got its own issues too. Unless the generals and baby Kim decide to go for economic liberalization, it’s going to make the earlier famine look like a picnic. On the other hand, maybe those Chinese paratroopers will force economic liberalization.
China is in need of NKorean women. They killed too many of their own!
If youget the chance, watch the documentary Kimjongzilla (IIRC). Very chilling about the brutality in that benighted country. And many of the women who escape to China are forced into brothels. Despite knowing that they run a substantial risk of being made into prostitutes, they still flee.
There is an excess of 60 million+ boys over girls in China
–they may well take Korean wives and/or “comfort women”
I think you are right that NK will collapse and China will invade. As for people fleeing to China, when they flee now they are shot by either NK guards or Chinese. Some do get through though. It’s doubtful that Kim Jung-un is old enough to have mastered the survival skills needed to keep his generals in control. The credible reports I’ve heard of North Korea show it as a nightmarish corner of Hell, but it could get worse with collapse.