The Coming Fall Of North Korea

The collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime of North Korea is imminent. The Kim regime will fall in five years due to its own nukes. The Kim dynasty's nuclear development has continued for more than six decades. North Korea is estimated to have over 60 nuclear weapons today. The international community has continued the effort to denuclearize North Korea and to open up the world's most isolated country to the outside world. The Kim dynasty regime believes nuclear weapons to threaten the international community and to create fear among its populace are the only means to ensure his security. But it is sadly mistaken. Kim Jong-un' fake offers to denuclearize North Korea as shown in the US-North Korea summits in 2018 and 2019 will continue as Kim aims to gain economic and other benefits from the United States and its allies. However, the familiar North Korean tricks will no longer work. Washington will keep tightening economic and other sanctions on North Korea. Donald Trump's surprise encounter with Kim Jong-un at the DMZ on June 30, 2019, was nothing but a symbolic gesture with no substance. China, North Korea's lifeline, is showing signs of discarding the Kim Jong-un regime. China is kicking the old, wrong perception that North Korea serves as a buffer against US presence in East Asia. China's bond with North Korea is worsening Beijing's international reputation. Kim Jong-un, mocked as "Kim Fatty the Third" among the Chinese, has become a serious political liability to the Xi Jinping government. China will seek a regime change in North Korea. It prefers to see a Vietnam-type, nuclear-free government in North Korea. A sweeping popular uprising of starving North Koreans has also been simmering. Emerging technologies may take actions to end the Kim dynasty even earlier than the international pressure and Chinese actions against the Kim regime. Technologies to remove global troublemakers are making unremitting progress. For example, invisible, undetectable, tiny AI-based drones loaded with the genetic information about global mischief-makers could be deployed to eliminate them in any place in the next five years. Still, the Kim Jong-un regime can survive if it decides to move in the right direction. International society has advised that North Korea pursue Vietnam-style economic success. The economic prosperity of Vietnam has been possible since Hanoi had no nuclear weapons and could thus be a friend to the United States. Kim Jong-un's move to recast his reclusive country is the only remaining option for his survival. Kim doesn't need to be afraid of the "Big Lies," including the formation of North Korea as a "big Lie" state in 1948 and the Kim dynasty referred to in North Korea as the Mount Paektu Bloodline as a fabrication of history, to be known to his people. All communist countries have their own dirty history on par with North Korea's. For instance, communist China has been called an "Empire of Lies." The falsehood of the Mount Paektu Bloodline matters little to North Koreans. What matters most to them, starving and undernourished, is the bread-and-butter issue. Kim Jong-un should realize that his days are numbered anyway. If Kim ditches his nuclear arsenal, and launches economic reforms to make North Korea a second Vietnam, he will be able to establish himself as a heroic national leader who deserves international acclaim. The Kim Jong-un regime is now at the crossroads between prosperity and collapse. [About the author] Young Sop Ahn, the author of "Ten Megatrends Changing Our Lives," is a global thinker. Ahn was a visiting scholar at MIT and a graduate student associate at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs before he joined the faculty of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy of the ROK government. Educated at MIT, Harvard, and Seoul National University (SNU), Ahn holds two PhDs in international political economy and information science from MIT and SNU, respectively. Email: [email protected]

A North Korean government collapse would have serious consequences in North Korea and beyond. At the very least, a collapse would reduce the already scarce food and essential goods available to the population, in part due to hoarding and increasing costs. This could lead to a humanitarian disaster. Factions emerging after a collapse could plunge the country into civil war that spills over into neighboring countries. Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be used and even proliferated. This report examines ways of controlling and mitigating the consequences, recognizing that the Republic of Korea (ROK) and its U.S. ally will almost certainly need to intervene militarily in the North, likely seeking Korean unification as the ultimate outcome. But such an intervention requires serious preparation. North Koreans must be convinced that they will be treated well and could actually have better lives after unification. The allies need to prepare to deliver humanitarian aid in the North, stop conflict, demilitarize the North Korean military and security services over time, and secure and eventually eliminate North Korean WMD. Potential Chinese intervention must be addressed, ideally leading to cooperation with ROK and U.S. forces. Plans are needed for liberating North Korean political prisons before the guards execute the prisoners. Property rights need to be addressed. The ROK must sustain its military capabilities despite major reductions in force size due to very low birthrates. And ROK reluctance to broadly address North Korean collapse must be overcome so that plans in these areas can move forward.

In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Written for a young audience, this intense memoir explores the harsh realities of life on the streets in contemporary North Korea. Every Falling Star is the memoir of Sungju Lee, who at the age of twelve was forced to live on the streets of North Korea and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, “his brothers,” to daily be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.

Offers biographical accounts of several of North Korea’s leaders to illuminate the inner workings of its government. First published in Korean in 2016, Inside North Korea’s Theocracy offers a fascinating and rare look at the lives of several of the regime’s key leaders. Its primary focus is Jang Song-thaek, a talented and reform-minded member of the political ruling class who was executed in 2013. Jang was the son-in-law of North Korean founder, Kim Il-sung; brother-in-law of its second leader, Kim Jong-il; and uncle to its current leader, Kim Jong-un. The author traces Jang’s life from his youth as a brilliant student in Pyongyang to his eventual marriage to Kim Kyong-hui and his rising power as a businessman to, ultimately, his untimely death. In addition to biographical sketches of Jang, his wife, and brother-in-law, Ra Jong-yil provides first-hand impressions of life in North Korea and illuminates the inner workings of its government. “If one could read only a single book to thoroughly understand the nature of the North Korean political system, the Kim family dynasty, and the forces that have combined in creating a unique authoritarian regime marked by deep and worsening structural flaws, Ra Jong-yil’s pathbreaking study of Jang Song-thaek is such a book. A preeminent watcher of North Korea coupled with top-level national security policy experiences, Ra presents a chilling and compelling story.” — Chung Min Lee, Senior Fellow and Director of the Korean Security Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “…a rich biography of Mr. Jang, the most prominent victim of the purges his young nephew has conducted since assuming power in 2011.” — New York Times, on the Korean edition

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

A North Korean government collapse would have serious consequences in North Korea and beyond. At the very least, a collapse would reduce the already scarce food and essential goods available to the population, in part due to hoarding and increasing costs. This could lead to a humanitarian disaster. Factions emerging after a collapse could plunge the country into civil war that spills over into neighboring countries. Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be used and even proliferated. This report examines ways of controlling and mitigating the consequences, recognizing that the Republic of Korea (ROK) and its U.S. ally will almost certainly need to intervene militarily in the North, likely seeking Korean unification as the ultimate outcome. But such an intervention requires serious preparation. North Koreans must be convinced that they will be treated well and could actually have better lives after unification. The allies need to prepare to deliver humanitarian aid in the North, stop conflict, demilitarize the North Korean military and security services over time, and secure and eventually eliminate North Korean WMD. Potential Chinese intervention must be addressed, ideally leading to cooperation with ROK and U.S. forces. Plans are needed for liberating North Korean political prisons before the guards execute the prisoners. Property rights need to be addressed. The ROK must sustain its military capabilities despite major reductions in force size due to very low birthrates. And ROK reluctance to broadly address North Korean collapse must be overcome so that plans in these areas can move forward.

This monograph considers the future trajectory of the Pyongyang regime and explores a range of future scenarios. It does not consider the future of North Korea as a geographic or territorial entity. Some analysts and observers discuss the future without clarifying whether they are discussing the country of North Korea or the Pyongyang regime. In this monograph, the focus is on the fate of the regime dominated by the Kim Dynasty, initially ruled by Kim Il Sung and then led by his son, Kim Jong Il, following the former's death in 1994. A fundamental assumption is that the regime will collapse. Thus, the key question is not whether the regime will collapse, but when and how it will collapse. The logic behind this assumption is based on this author's assessment that the Kim regime is a totalitarian one, and that such a regime has a limited life span. However, this collapse may be a long and drawn out process that could very well play out over a period of years or even over the course of a decade or more. The purpose of this monograph is to set out an array of scenarios to assist planners and decisionmakers in thinking about and preparing for possible future contingencies concerning North Korea. This monograph does not dwell on war or conflict scenarios involving North Korea because military planners have already focused considerable effort and attention on these. It is entirely possible that the fate of the country as a political, territorial, and juridical entity is intimately bound up with the fate of the regime, but one should not assume this to be so. In other words, the collapse of the Kim regime may not lead to the collapse of North Korea as a state. Moreover, one should not assume that even if the regime collapse is followed by state collapse that these events would inexorably lead to Korean unification.