Evidence Suggests that North Korea Has Not Had A Coup

It is good to see something published in the media about North Korea that doesn’t involve wild coup and regime collapse theories with little to no evidence to support it:

“It is highly unlikely that either the prolonged public absence of Kim Jong Un or this weekend’s visit to Seoul by senior North Korean officials signal any kind of regime change in the North,” Asia analyst Sue Terry, with the think tank Eurasia Group, wrote in a research note.

Kim was notably absent from the closing ceremony of the Asian Games and the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang, but the disappearing act itself may not be very significant. “Kim Jong Il [his father] did periodically disappear from view, as has Kim Jong Un,” Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at the University of Southern California and author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” told Foreign Policy magazine. Kim Jong Un has been absent from the public eye for prolonged stretches in three other cases since taking over in 2011. The longest gap was in June 2012, when he was not seen for 24 days.

North Korea just sent three top officials — Hwang Pyong So, the vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and second in command to Kim Jong Un himself; Kim Yang Gon, who is in charge of communication with South Korea; and Choe Ryong Hae, the secretary of the Workers’ Party Central Committee — to Seoul, which also argues against the possibility of a coup.

According to Terry, three such high-ranking figures would not leave North Korea in the midst of a coup or if Kim’s health were seriously deteriorating. Instead, the surprise visit in the South from the delegation is likely a product of economic desperation, she said, as relations with the North’s longtime ally and supporter, China, begin to falter.  [International Business Times]

You can read more at the link, but the North is always looking for free money to behave for a little for little to nothing in return.  So the delegation could have traveled to Seoul for this reason.  I also think it could be part of a charm offensive that they typically do before moving into a provocation cycle.  We will see what happens the next few months, but all the coup and regime collapse theories need to stop until there is actual evidence to support any of them.