Obama Says North Korea’s Regime to Collapse Over Time / Sputnik International http://t.co/x8ITw1w0iA #NorthKorea #DPRK
— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 23, 2015
Reading between the lines here this Chinese General appears to be signaling to the North Koreans that they will not save the Kim regime if they do something foolish like start a war. However, I see nothing in here that says they will not get involved to stabilize a post-Kim regime North Korea after they do something foolish:
China would not help save North Korea even if the neighboring North’s regime collapses, a former general of China’s military said Tuesday, in rare explicit comments that possibly reflect Beijing’s growing frustration with its unpredictable ally.
“China is not a savior,” Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of the Nanjing military region of the People’s Liberation Army, wrote in an op-ed published by the Global Times newspaper, which has close ties with China’s ruling Communist Party.
“If North Korea really collapses, even China can’t save it,” Wang said.
The comments by Wang were in response to a recent contribution by another Chinese expert, who urged Beijing not to “abandon” North Korea. [Yonhap]
Here is more of what Wang had to say from the South China Morning Post:
Wang said China would not get involved in any new war on the Korean peninsula.
“China cannot influence the situation on the Korean peninsula … China has no need to light a fire and get burnt. Whoever provokes a conflagration bears responsibility,” he wrote. “Now there is no more ’socialist camp’. It is not necessary for China’s younger generation to fight a war for another country.”
Wang criticised the North for its nuclear development, using it as an example of how the country’s interests can differ from China’s and saying it had “already brought about the serious threat of nuclear contamination in China’s border area”.
But he also slammed Western countries for “demonising” North Korea and interfering in its internal affairs in the name of human rights. “China absolutely does not meddle,” he wrote.
Beijing will “support what should be supported and oppose what should be opposed” regarding the North, Wang said, indicating that China was not ready to completely give up on its troublesome neighbour.
China will neither “court” nor “abandon” North Korea, he wrote. “This should be China’s basic attitude.” [South China Morning Post]
You can read more at the link.
Via One Free Korea comes this article from the Guardian that is one of the few trying to tamp down the coup and regime collapse theories that are popular in the media currently:
But there is a less dramatic explanation. Based on the video evidence of his limp, it is widely accepted that Kim is now receiving medical treatment – possibly at one of the family’s well-appointed villas. The Seoul-based defector group, North Korea Intellectuals’ Solidarity, claims that Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister who acted as an aide to their father Kim Jong-il during his final years, is signing off on decisions in his absence.
Yet claims that Kim has been toppled are not supported by reports of internal North Korean lectures explaining the surprise visit to the Games. DailyNK, a South Korean media organisation staffed in part by defectors who have sources in the North, says civilians were gathered at workplaces and housing complexes on Saturday afternoon to hear the government’s explanation for the trip.
“Senior party and military cadres were dispatched all the way [to the Asian Games] for our athletes, who, without exception, honoured the Fatherland with their indomitable fighting spirit,” one lecturer explained. “With his great love and compassion, Marshal Kim Jong-un personally organised their dispatch, and provided them with a special plane,” she added.
The text for these lectures, a regular feature of life in North Korea, is produced centrally for dispatch throughout the land, and delivered without deviation. Not attending public lectures and teaching sessions is, officially at least, not an option – as mandated by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-ideology System.
The result is that almost all North Koreans hear the same stories and lies, and remain on-message, however far they may be from the capital. In the absence of verifiable information on Kim’s status, they offer vital insight into what Pyongyang wants the country’s people to believe.
The suggestion that he is still at the helm, nominally at least, is supported by Choson Sinbo, an online publication run by the pro-North association of Korean residents in Japan, which reported that the visit to Incheon was “made possible by the resolve of Kim Jong-un”. [The Guardian]
You can read more at the link.
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.
I think this article is getting way out ahead of itself since I do not think a collapse of North Korea is about to happen simply because Kim Jong-un has not been spotted in a month, but nevertheless it provides good reading in regards to topics we have discussed here before on the ROK Drop:
Yet at the same time, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo need to coordinate planning on the potential collapse of the Kim regime in North Korea to ensure a rapid and coordinated response aimed at securing and preventing the proliferation of the North’s WMD and related materials.
Trilateral cooperation—bolstered by the support of the UN Security Council and key nonproliferation mechanisms—will be essential to stopping the potential spread of WMD and their delivery systems. A significant concern would be the emergence of organized-crime groups that could try and peddle these materials—as well as advanced conventional arms—on the black market. Aside from intelligence efforts, one key mechanism in this scenario would be the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which could stem proliferation of WMD and related material from the Korean peninsula via the sea. The PSI is a global effort to stop the trafficking of WMD between states and nonstate actors of proliferation concern, which the United States launched in 2003 and now has over fifty member states, including the United States, Japan and South Korea. While it would be premature to enact a naval blockade, it will be imperative for all three parties to focus their naval resources on ensuring that WMD do not leave North Korea.
The political volatility in the North post-Kim would not only compel stronger trilateral cooperation between the United States and its allies. Such an environment would also provide an imperative for enhanced bilateral security cooperation between Japan and South Korea.
Finalizing an Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) would be the first steps. An ACSA would provide Japan’s Self-Defense Forces the ability to evacuate its citizens in the event of imminent conflict on the Korea Peninsula. The GSOMIA, which was almost agreed to before falling victim to domestic political whims in Seoul, would be a basis for information sharing on the North’s WMD and missile systems. [The National Interest]
You can read more at the link, but here is a link to a Rand report from last year which discusses North Korean regime collapse. Robert Kaplan many years ago wrote an article on preparing for a North Korean collapse that is a good read as well.
UPDATE #2: It sounds like at least somebody in the South Korean government has been reading Kaplan:
China is pursuing the so-called Northeast Project to co-opt Korean history with an eye on claiming North Korean territory when the regime there collapses, a senior lawmaker quoted a Chinese leader as saying. Former National Assembly speaker Kim Won-ki quoted the remarks in the Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee on Thursday, saying they were made in a frank meeting with the high-ranking Chinese official.
The Chinese leader also reportedly said Beijing finds the Kim Jong-il regime and the political situation in North Korea very unstable. In any emergency, the U.S and allied army would move to North Korea?s border with China and face the Chinese People’s Liberation Army there, a situation Beijing would not tolerate, he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese attempts to distort ancient Korean history have this time taken it to the point of trademarking as their own the spot of the birth of the Korean people according to the Dangun mythology, Mt. Baekdu, by attaching the Chinese name, “Changbai shan.”
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UPDATE #1: Richardson has more analysis of the Kaplan article over at TKL.
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It seems like every six months somebody writes an article about what should happen in the event of a North Korean collapse. The latest person to take his shot at providing a theory of what to do in the event of a North Korean collapse is Robert Kaplan. Well now we know what Mr. Kaplan was up to two months ago at the DMZ. Coming Anarchy first reported on this, but you had to have an Atlantic Magazine subscription to read the complete article, however Robert was nice enough to actually cut and paste the whole article.
Basically Kaplan provides a good summary of the Korean situation and provides his recommendations about how to handle a post-Kim Jong-il North Korea. Kaplan believes that the Chinese are making a power play to control a post-Kim Jong-il North Korea by either militarily occupying the country or installing a puppet regime subservient to China. This really shouldn’t be a surprise to those following things here on the peninsula. I would actually be more surprised if China wasn’t making plans to exert some kind of authority over North Korea after a collapse. After all the Chinese are fearful of the masses of refugees that could pour across their borders not to mention the regional economic and military threat a united Korean peninsula could become a few decades after reunification to China. I’m also sure the Chinese wouldn’t appreciate a united Korea with US troops in it as well. So it is totally in their interest to establish conditions to where they will exert some kind of authority over a post-Kim Jong-il North Korea and prevent a unified Korean peninsula. However, don’t expect a collapsed North Korea any time soon. China will not allow that country to collapse until after the Beijing Olympics. The 2008 Olympics is going to be China’s coming out party and they don’t’ want anything like a massive refugee crisis or war on the Korean peninsula to ruin it. The scenario of China taking authority over North Korea is a very real one. China is already trying to claim ancient Korean history as their own so if they ever do occupy North Korea they can use their shared history as part of the reasoning for doing so. It worked in Tibet, why not North Korea too?
Kaplan also provides scenarios of a collapsed North Korea being occupied by US, Chinese, Russian, and South Korean troops. I have long advocated that the US should not send in any troops into a collapsed North Korea and that the ROK Army should overwhelmingly fill the country with soldiers to exert authority over the north before the Chinese or Russians can move in. If the US moves into North Korea that would give the Chinese and the Russians the green light to move in as well. In the interest of a unified democratic Korean peninsula the US and South Korea cannot have these two country’s occupy any portion of North Korea. That is why it is critical that South Korea quickly deploys it’s forces throughout North Korea and implement martial law and immediately begin humanitarian assistance to exert a sense of authority. North Koreans have been brought up since the day they were born to hate the United States and if the ROK Army is seen working side by side with the United States in North Korea this may give many North Koreans the impression that the South Koreans are the pawns of the United States and may be more inclined to wanting a Chinese occupation instead. It is critical that the South Koreans have to be viewed early on as the legitimate occupiers of North Korea by the North Korean population. The US military could be best used in South Korea to help the ROK Army establish camps and give humanitarian aid to North Korean refugees that may poor into South Korea. Even this has to appear to be South Korean led. Everything done in the early days of a collapse has to be viewed in the context of building the legitimacy of the South Korean government in the eyes of the North Korean population. Also the US Navy would be critical to blockade the country to ensure no weapons or WMD are being smuggled out of the country.
Another recommendation that Kaplan advocates is that the US should not conduct a military strike on North Korea in response to a missile test, which he is absolutely correct about. This is something I have long believed in though for slightly different reasons than Kaplan’s. Kaplan believes North Korea would retaliate with a limited artillery attack on Seoul and Yongsan Garrison. I don’t think he would do that because that would provoke a war because the automatic counter battery fire back at North Korea would just be tremendous which would ultimately escalate into full scale war. What I think is more likely is that North Korea would retaliate in more unconventional ways like terrorist attacks on subways, bombing bridges, shooting down civilian airliners, or small scale DMZ shootouts for example that would not precipitate a full scale war, but still inflict heavy damage on the South Koreans which the regime could in turn blame the US for and then use the attack on his country as an excuse for a complete nuclear arms build up. Kim Jong-il is desperately praying for a US air attack that the Clinton era history revisionists want George W. Bush to give to him. The Clinton era policy advice on Korea is as incompetent now as it was back when they were in power. Fortunately President Bush is not taking their advice and sticking to economic sanctions to wear down the Kim regime.
Overall, the Kaplan article is a good read for those who haven’t been following the situation on the Korean peninsula to closely and I think it is great he debunks the Clinton era policy makers recommendations to bomb North Korea. Ultimately reading the article I think it is increasingly clear that South Korea’s greatest national interest should be in maintaining a strong US-ROK relationship because South Korea has no chance of a reunified, democratic Korean peninsula without the United States to counter balance the territorial and hegemonic ambitions of China and Russia.
