There is a theory on the collapse of North Korea, explaining that it will occur in seven stages. Supposedly this formula is based on the collapse of other communist countries.
North Korea seems like it is fluctuating between the 3rd and 4th phase and has for the last 30 years, but I’ve never seen signs of stage 5.
Due to the poverty and famine, there is supposedly a lot of corruption and black market trading. I don’t know about local fiefs though. Then the central government cracks down, but the people may fight back. I’ve heard (not sure if it is true) that the NK government has mostly given up trying to stop black market trading.
But they never seem to enter a 5th phase where there is active resistance against the central government. It seems like the oppression and orwellian oversight is too overpowering, and the public too brainwashed to really form any kind of active resistance.
Are there any signs of NK entering the 5th phase, or of there being meaningful resistance to the regime?
My understanding is corruption is widespread, but I don’t think there are any local warlords. The central regime tries to clamp down on the corruption and efforts to circumvent the central government to varying degrees at varying times. Like I was saying, with issues like smuggling and black market trading I think they’ve mostly realized they aren’t winning. But supposedly the new Kim is trying to clamp down again, I heard border crossings are harder now than under Kim Jong Il.
NK doesn’t have resource depletion. They have a shitload of resources, but their economy is so brain-dead that they can’t exploit them. They lease large tracts of land to Chinese mining companies, for instance.
With the stages listed out like that it makes it seem that NK has bucked the trend and found a formula that “works”.
I don’t see many signing up to start a militia, or even significant criminal organization, in a country with 1 million loyal soldiers and summary executions.
I don’t see North Korea ever being past phase 2 on that list.
Yes, they tolerate black market trading but that’s because in the late 1990’s there was a severe famine and it was the black market keeping the population alive. Even so, the generation that grew up during those years shows definite signs of malnutrition, such as stunted adult height.
I’ve never heard of local “fiefs” arising, it has been, and still is, firmly controlled by the central government/party.
Yes, is there any actual evidence for the rise of independent fiefdoms? All power is concentrated in the Korean Workers Party in Pyong Yang. A quick search of news articles about internal politics in North Korea didn’t reveal anything that looks similar.
North Korea IS running out of time, because the smuggling of cell phones across the border from china means they can’t keep the isolation and news black out any longer and it’s becoming obvious to the younger generation that the crux of the state idealogy: Juche is a joke since they are completely dependent on China for food and electricity.
Unforunately they are still in phase 2 and it could be a LONG process of unravelling.
These articles have some insight into the internal politics of NK and no mentions are made of rise of independent fiefdoms.
is in fact nothing more than the pet theory of Robert D. Kaplan. The KFR is the Kim Family Regime, which makes this theory rather North Korean specific and not in fact based on the collapse of other communist regimes, no? I don’t seem to recall the KFR having any role in the fall of communism in the USSR or Eastern Europe.
I’m reminded of the 14 defining characteristics of fascism that made a number of rounds “proving” the US under Bush was heading towards fascism because of how well it fit into these “traits have since been widely accepted as the 14 defining characteristics of fascism.” If of course by widely accepted one means “was written in a magazine essay once by one person named Lawrence W. Britt.”
Oh, and as an addendum, the seven stages first appears in Kaplan’s article When North Korea Falls published in The Atlantic in October 2006 (the collapse is taking longer than we thought), where he explains the seven phases were outline to him by “Robert Collins, a retired Army master sergeant and now a civilian area expert for the American military in South Korea.”
I’d imagine that phases 1 and 2 take a LONG time to manifest, 3 is still kind of long-term, but 4,5, 6 and 7 happen rather rapidly- as in less than a decade or so.
So it’s likely that NK is still in 2, but moving toward 3.
I heard that Pyongyang is quite a modern city now, but the rest of the country is stuck. It can’t be too long before the “city on the hill” starts to change North Korea.
If it’s likely then show us some evidence? We actually have evidence of the opposite, in July last year the Chief of Army of NK was dismissed and branded a counter revolutionary.
Seems to me the grip of the KWP is pretty iron clad, they don’t tolerate anyone else grabbing too much power.
Unfortunately as long as China keeps propping them up with enough fuel and food to survive NK will not fall from internal pressure. Kaplan’s theory might happen if NK does something stupid enough to piss off China enough to cut off aid. Famine would be the result pretty quickly.
The only other way NK will fall is if it does something stupid enough to actually provoke a shooting war with the south / US. In which case the regime will be taken out pretty quickly but only at the cost of 10’s of millions of South Korean lives and the destruction of Seoul. In that scenario China is not going to stay out of it, they won’t tolerate a united Korea with US troops at their border. So the US / Korea rolls tanks in from the south and China rolls tanks in from the North. Then it gets ugly.
Yeah, you are probably right. I agree there are no local warlords, but there is a lot of black market trading and corruption to get around the failed central state. But I don’t see any local authorities coming up who resist the central gov. So they would arguably only be in phase 2, seeing how phase 5 requires those local warlords to actively resist the government.
Hopefully not, I think its more likely that in any hot scenario, NK uses conventional artillery on Seoul and uses it’s Nukes on massed South / US army forces crossing their border instead. They can unleash 500,000 artillery rounds on Seoul in the first hour:
The US then obliterates Pyong Yang with conventional weapons using massive air strikes. China rolls in from the north and grabs as much land as possible but stops short of actually attacking US / Southern forces. The end result is a slightly bigger south Korea and China controlling most of the former NK.
An ugly bloody war with a combined death toll of 10-20 million between North and South Korea but not the start of WW III.
There is no significant infrastructure to maintain. There are a few “islands” of technology that need a few roads and power lines. The rest of the country may as well be in the middle ages.