Kimmy won’t do anything to reform, he’s too old and has too much to lose. Neither will any of the other major players in NK for the simple reason that Kim will die before too long - there’s no point rocking the boat now.
The Chinese are almost certainly waiting for the same thing. Once Kin Jong is gone they can exert pressure to get their favoured candidate put in charge. They will be looking for someone who will cause a lot less international tension and can begin to move NK towards a more Chinese model.The last thing they want is a desperate provocative neighbour who is also a startling reminder of their own Maoist past. Incidentally the Chinese were only able to move towards the more free-market system they have now once Mao and his immediate cronies were gone because the latter communists had less stake the previous misguided policies.
As for what he could do it’s difficult to say because the internal working of the party aren’t well known publically (the Chinese will certainly know), but I suspect that everyone in the party is so bound up in politics in ego that anything but the continuation of the status quo is almost impossible without some massive change (like Kim dying). What they should do is drastically cut the military and focus everything on agrarian reform, start accepting aid from everywhere, abandon Nuclear development (and throw open all related areas to inspectors) then gradually start down the Chinese model, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Then why so many people risking their life to esacape?
Not when everyone seems to have a gun pointe at you and the surest road to nutritional security is to join the military and point guns at people.
That certainly seems to be the plan in China and Russia. Want to make billion exploiting your countrymen, fine. Criticize the government, then we will confiscate your ill gotten gains and put your family in prison.
From the POV of the NK leadership, the best possible future, other than maintaining the status quo, would be unification with SK on terms that allow the Communist Party to share in power.
That’s not entirely inconceivable – I mean, if the North Koreans suddenly become voters for the parliament of united Korea, who else they gonna vote for? At least in the first few election cycles. (Maybe eventually they’ll figure out that voting involves making a choice.)
That’s how I would be thinking if I were one of the NK leaders, anyway.
The problem is, they can’t open the doors to the outside without exposing a huge number of common citizens to the real world and/or letting in large numbers of foreigners. If you import Hondas, (or Hyundais) you need someone to repair them, who must take the training courses. Ditto for electronics. Ditto for farm equipment, for resources like oil. You need a means to pay these, which means the banking system becomes integrated… You need to accomodate large convoys of trucks from the neighbours - unless you plan to switch drivers at the border. Or accomodate large container ships in volume. You need the agents to order spare parts for everything. And then… so much is on the internet nowadays we take it for granted it’s part of commerce - reference material, order status, etc.
The closest anyone comes to what you suggest is Cuba, and they only accomplish it with the full cooperation of the USA who makes it difficult for anyone to do business there.
Wait a minute, OP. Is the goal to liberalize the economy, or is the goal to bring his people back from the brink of starvation?
I think he could do the latter in relatively short order. North Korea could sell of most of it’s military hardware to places like Iran and Libya, and certainly SK would be an enthusiastic buyer. This provides some short term cash to buy all the gruel they can eat for some time.
Then drop most of the heavy industries and focus on agrarian ones, so the nation can feed itself.
Whatever is left of the military can be circled around Kim’s palace to keep him in Chairman Mao suits.
Liberalize the economy? He’d be dead meat in a year or two.
This is the “Dear Leader”, son of the Great Leader. You know, the guy who shot nothing but holes-in-ones on his very first time playing golf. The guy credited for every positive thing, for every invention there is. The guy who travels around giving divine guidance to the people.
To admit that their entire system is in error is to admit that their ENTIRE SYSTEM is in error, and that he is mortal, fallible and wrong. It means the end of a government like that one.
They only threw down Mao and Stalin after they had been safely dead for some time.