Does North Korea’s “Combative Behavior†Signal the Beginning of the End?
For years, I have heard predictions about the fall of North Korea. During my second year in Korea, a South Korean government official told me he thought the Kim Jong Il regime would crumble within two years and reunification would follow. That was in 2003.
Since then, I have heard numerous predictions from Koreans and the international community alike regarding the state of the DPRK and how much longer it has to survive. With the Kaesong project in the dumps, you have to come to either one of two conclusions: 1) North Korea is confident it can get by with help from other nations like China, or 2) if it’s going to go down, it’s going to go down fighting and it will take everyone it can with it – no Kaesong for South Korea, no journalists for the United States, and a nuclear test for the rest of the world. (Why not take the whole world with it by starting nuclear war, you may ask? Actually, if put in a situation where nothing can be saved, North Korea under KJI is one country I could see actually doing that given it has the capabilities. But it’d have to take a lot more than what is happening right now for that to become a serious possibility, in my opinion.)
Coincidentally, just as North Korea’s Worker’s Party supposedly spearheaded a campaign “mobilizing the Party cell organization to send petition letters to Kim Jong Il asking for the swift nomination of his successor,” former President Bill Clinton recently said during a Q & A session in Seoul following an opening speech he delivered for a conference on the global economy that “North Korea’s combative behavior is a symptom of the political turmoil inside the country,” and he advised “the United States and South Korea to be careful not to overreact.
Clinton referred to North Korea’s recent actions as “disruptive conduct” related to concerns over political infighting and the health of its leader, Kim Jong Il.
I think Clinton is right — North Korea’s recent aggressive behavior is a reflection of some kind of internal instability which it wants to hide from the rest of the world through bold, outward behavior, although, I’m not sure what he means when he says he doesn’t want the U.S. or South Korea to “overreact. (I assume he means militarily, but to the best of my knowledge, that hasn’t really been a serious consideration at this point.)
Still, I certainly would like to think we are seeing the beginning of the end of Kim Jong Il’s regime with his health being an apparent factor as well as the peculiar fact that unlike his father who groomed KJI for succession back in the 1970s, nearly 20 years before Kim Jr. actually took control, KJI has waited until recently to show any sort of favoritism toward a possible successor – perhaps signaling acknowledgement of his unavoidable mortality, which may come sooner than later.
As for the political in-fighting Clinton says is taking place, my guess is some sort of power struggle has developed in anticipation of a weakened Kim (both physically and pehaps politically). This is something I predict will continue even after Kim Jong Il passes away, Kim Jung Un be damned.