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Permalink Reply by Simon Hoggett on December 19, 2011 at 1:02pm

Be careful what you wish for. We still don't know the succession plan in North Korea and how that will be received by other senior power players and the public. I don't think that Kim Jong-eun has had enough time to really solidify his power base and it could be a very turbulent time ahead.  

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Permalink Reply by Valentin JANIAUT on December 19, 2011 at 12:58pm

Curiously my workmates during the lunch was not looking so happy and was extremely concerned by this news. They even asked me if I was considering to move back to France. Obviously, so far I will not.

The next days are going to be interesting!

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Larry Krumenaker on December 19, 2011 at 1:01pm

My first reaction was.... Whoaaaaaaa.....

 

My second reaction is....up the defense status.  From what I've heard, the son is a hot head.  I wouldn't expect a North Korean Spring.

 

Larry Krumenaker

Hermograph Press

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Permalink Reply by Joe Wasylyk on December 19, 2011 at 1:10pm

These are very interesting times.  Now I believe we will find out to what extent that the people of North Korea were submerged into the social media scene.  I'm sure that there must of been some interesting communication with South Korea.

I'm hoping that there will be an uprising by the people of North Korea who have lived as paupers when the Kim's of the Country siphoned everything good for themselves and their 'born to rule' relatives.

If the people of Russia are motivated to challenge the power of Mr. Putin I believe something similar will eventually happen in North Korea.  First we had East & West Germany in a somewhat difficult unification. And, now we can hope to have a similar North & South Korea unification.

Or, could this be one step closer to the One World Government that the 'secret society' is hoping to create for a more peaceful Society. Only time will tell.

Joe W.

Seniorpreneur

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Permalink Reply by Simon Hoggett on December 19, 2011 at 1:16pm

Easy to hope for an uprising when you are sitting home, nice and safe and a few thousand miles away in Canada. I for one, do not want there to be an uprising in North Korea. A gradual progression towards democracy would be much better. 

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Permalink Reply by Joe Engstrum on December 20, 2011 at 2:35pm

Agreed. An uprising may have been something to hope for under years of rule by the previous Kims, but given this window of opportunity, other routes would be much preferable. I doubt that reunification will ever happen peacefully. It would would only happen as a result of revolt or war. And revolt, I think, is unlikely. I don't feel that an accurate comparison can really be made with Russia. The unrest in Russia is stemming from an emerging middle class that doesn't exist in N. Korea (and ironically a class that Putin himself had a lot to do with building). However it plays out, I think 2012 could be an interesting year in S. Korea.

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Permalink Reply by Aaron McKenzie on December 19, 2011 at 1:18pm

I'm not much of a pugilist, but I have no doubt that if you had put me in a boxing ring with Kim Jong-il, I could have KO'd the hateful old fellow in short order. Hell, just about any of us could have done so: for at least the past five years, Kim had been in a state of physical decline, weakened by a series of strokes. Plus, he had a bouffant. Who couldn't drop a man with a bouffant?

I mention this to illustrate that Kim Jong-il alone had no power whatsoever and certainly couldn't have ruled North Korea by himself. To maintain his position, he had to continually curry the favor of a small but defined group of North Korea elites - what Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has termed the "winning coalition." If Kim didn't appease these fellows, he likely would have followed in the footsteps of Nicolae Ceauşescu.

This appeasement extended to the selection of Kim Jong-il's successor - that is, his third son, Kim Jong-Eun, whose official anointing was seemingly confirmed with one of those full-on, goose-stepping military parades late last year. Had North Korea's Winning Coalition not approved of Kim the Younger, Papa Kim would have been unable to shoehorn him into the office, as even a dictator faces limits on his power.

Which is why I don't expect much of a change in policy from one Kim to the next. After all, the son will have to placate the same odious interest groups that supported his father. Of course, Kim Jong-il had 40-plus years of experience in navigating the perils of power in North Korea, so he knew the whos, hows, and whens of placation. The danger of (dynastic) handovers of power is that the son might inadvertantly step on the wrong general's toes and find himself without a Winning Coalition.

For this reason, among others, any transition would likely have been smoother if Kim Jong-il had fought off death for another decade and properly groomed his son to take the throne. Even then, as Ted Galen Carpenter argued last year, Junior Kim's future would have been far from smooth: "If Kim Jong-il does not stay in power - in other words, stay alive - for at least 6-8 years, Kim Jong-Eun's chances of being anything more than a figurehead are minimal, and he might not even be a figurehead. Accidents certainly do happen in North Korea. And if Kim Jong-il died within the next few years, I think the chances of this 28 year-old actually holding supreme power in North Korea would not be favorable at all. In fact, I wouldn't want to be the company issuing the life insurance policy on him."

Carpenter went on to lay out three possible scenarios that could occur if Kim Jong-il were to croak in the next 2-3 years - which he obviously just did:

    •    The military, which likely undergirds the North Korean regime, could take power.
    •    An economically reform-minded regime could emerge, allied with and seeking to emulate China.
    •    The Juche hits the fan and all hell breaks loose. Cue chaos.

Anyone care to place a bet?

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Permalink Reply by Youngil Ely Loew on December 20, 2011 at 4:36am

I'll take 2-1 odds for the first one, 3-1 odds on the last one, and 20-1 odds on the middle one.

I agree that most likely nothing will really change, except some bold claims of a 'new era' and some propaganda talk about "North Korea being stronger than ever". Kim Jong-Eun will probably make working with Korea a little harder than usual for a couple years, as he will probably be more uncompromising in order to assert his authority in the eyes of the party leaders. I think the only way North Korea will ever really change is when it implodes from within, which could take another 50 years or so... whenever it happens, it will be both terrible to see the suffering the 100 year communist experiment caused, and relief that it is finally over.

That's my theory anyway.

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Permalink Reply by Narayanan Kannan on December 19, 2011 at 1:30pm

I visited the northern frontiers in China bordering North Korea during Chusoek Holidays. In variably all the mountain range in NK was totally shaved without a single tree. It is an environmental catastrophe. The oil & other embargo might be the reason behind this. I hope the new regime is more reasonable and cooperate with the rest of the world, at least a Chinese model towards democracy is a better option. I hope North Koreans use this opportunity for a change.

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 4, 2012 at 12:50am

Dear Mr. Kannan,

this video might be interesting to you in regards of why and how this tree cutting happens.

Best regards

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Permalink Reply by Emanuel Pastreich on December 19, 2011 at 1:31pm

It will definitely be a situation that creates great fluidity. I do not think you should assume any one person is in charge of events going forth. Rather we will have something akin to emergent complexity: seeming complex order that one finds in schools of fish which cannot be attributed to the intelligence of any one fish. A new order in Asia will emerge, but it will be impacted by Fukushima, by developments in the Middle East and some complex factors like the massive integration of economies and digitalization of money. 

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Permalink Reply by Tom Coyner on December 19, 2011 at 1:41pm

As was expected, this development came unexpectedly - as may be the case with other cascading events.  In all likelihood, there probably was adequate time to get at least the short-term political apparatus built around Kim Jong-Un that may enable him to survive his father's demise.  But after that, we are back to admitting how little we understand what's going in North Korea.

 

But one highly probable development for the immediate future is Dear Leader's death is not going to be something that plays well in North Korea's international relations.  Yes, Kim Jong-Un was educated in Switzerland, but most of his political infrastructural personnel have traveled much less extensively than a prior generation of DPRK technocrats who regularly visited the USSR and its Eastern Bloc countries. That means the current leadership is much more insular and probably more paranoid about the outside world.  Should that be the case, North Korea may prove more resistant to change than in the recent past.

 

There is also a minor parallel with Kim Jong-Il's sudden demise with that of his father's.  In today's papers we learned that North Koreans had offered to suspend enriching uranium as gesture to restart discussions with the US.  Kim Il-Sung made motions of moving away from the nuclear program immediately before his death.  We find ourselves with yet another morbid example of history repeating itself.

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