With the North Korean announcement that it now possesses nuclear weapons, (which comes as no surprise — it is simply meant to intensify pressure on the US to formulate a coherent strategy vis-a-vis Pyongyang) world attention is focused on the issue of solving the nuclear crisis — finding a way to force, or induce, or make North Korea do away with its nuclear program and nuclear aspirations. Millions of words have been written about the methods and tactics best suited to tackle the issue, including the strategy of six-party talks. However, it is rarely mentioned that the nuclear issue can probably not be solved without addressing the deeper issue — the future of North Korea itself. Without a clear-cut strategy on this, all efforts to solve the nuclear issue are probably doomed, or worse, they could even pave the way for a military solution. So, what is preferable — collapse or transformation of the DPRK? And if transformation was to occur, would that help alleviate the tension and solve security problems? What should the world community do?

 

As Communism worldwide came to its end, scores of experts predicted the collapse of North Korea. It never happened, however, because the North Korean system was specifically designed by Kim Il Sung to withstand external pressures and to control and crush emerging internal challenges. The DPRK was no “ordinary” socialist country, but a bureaucratic authoritarian society — a blend of Communist rhetoric and oriental despotism, based on Confucian tradition, nationalism and a semi-religious ideology. Economic and humanitarian crisis does not always weaken such a system (as can be seen in the examples of Stalin‘s Soviet Union and Mao‘s China) but it fed a deep feeling of insecurity on the part of North Korean leaders. Perhaps predictably, in the 1990s, as Pyongyang sought ways to cope with both external and internal threats, it turned North Korea into a self-declared nuclear state (although it is impossible to confirm or deny such declarations). The result was spiraling confrontation and tension in the region. So, are the possibilities of the regime change/collapse any higher today than 15 years ago? What are the options?

 

Collapse?

 

We don’t even want to analyze a military scenario of regime change, which would result in unimaginable loss of lives both in the North and South and reduce the economic potential and opportunity for a normal life in the peninsula to ashes.

 

But even short of such a scenario, regime change (internally generated or assisted from the outside) would be a disaster for Korea and its neighbors. The grave mistake the well-wishers and geo–strategists make is to suppose that North Korean people will generally welcome a momentous “liberation“ and that things will eventually work out well for them in the aftermath. Yet even in the less complicated Iraq case the outcome is still far from positive. Regime change in North Korea would mean the disappearance of the country itself. North Korean statehood as such would be finished, as South Korea could not possibly accept any new separate power in North Korea formed “on the local base”. Such a new power constellation is anyway highly unlikely, simply because there is no human potential for it in the North in the short run, and would seem even more unlikely in a crisis likely to involve massive refugees and local conflicts with arms falling into the hands of warlords. This means that any change of regime in North Korean case would boil down to the absorption of North by South, with the North becoming an “occupation zone”.

 

Given the differences between Northerners isolated and brainwashed for generations and Westernized Southerners, would a Southern occupation be peaceful? Are more than twenty million North Koreans ready to become a “second rate people” in a unified Korea? What would happen if they were suddenly to be thrown into a ‘raw capitalist’ environment, when we know that most North Korean refugees today cannot adapt in the South even after coming there on their own volition? And what about the numerous (two to three million) North Korean nomenklatura and military? They would expect the worst — not just being left out in the cold like their colleagues in East Germany, but repression. That means that they would be likely to resort to armed, guerilla-type opposition, which would be viewed at least with sympathy by the population. There is evidence that such contingency plans already exist in North Korea. And what if the hypothetical nuclear weapons were in the posession of these rebels?

 

 The lesson of many centuries of Korean history is that region-based strife, as slow-burning conflict with the prospect of involving neighboring countries, can continue for decades. This would derail the prospering South Korean economy as well.

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