No, but it’s a huge help. And without a taste of the outside, it’s easy to keep wallowing in a horrific society - after all, how could it be better? What is there, other than this? Those other people, those horrible, godless others who are far worse-off than us? And the way the government clamps down on dissent, you really do need a secret way of communicating. Twitter/facebook/internet pseudonyms fulfill both roles in a way that is incredibly useful. I won’t say it’s required, I will say that it’s a nightmare.
The only foreseeable shift at the top that seems plausible to me would be a coup, either from a military group or a different faction of the family. Once that happens, then the aura of invincibility is gone. The military would fracture into infighting. From there, it could end up like Myanmar or like Somalia.
Because, just perhaps, the military might not share the Party’s commitment to all elements of NK Communist ideology, including, most significantly, juche (“self-reliance” or economic autarchy) – the thing that keeps NK sealed and isolated from outside-world influences. If NK opens up even a little, its totalitarianism will begin to erode.
For one, no, the Kim dynasty will not last longer than the pyramids. The Kim family is definitely an absolute monarchy in the old sense these days, and as a dynasty they will be subject to the same forces that have made it so no dynasty anywhere has outlasted the pyramids–the possibility of not enough offspring to continue or or such incompetent offspring they get pushed aside. But that may just mean a new dynasty begins. They have set themselves up to last for some time by not relying on strict primogeniture (KJU wasn’t KJI’s eldest son), since that makes it more difficult still since you have a better chance of finding a suitable heir if you can pick amongst a handful of close male relatives versus just your eldest son.
Anyway, North Korea exists as it does now because of China. Up until the 1990s China was very closed and thus the moderately open interactions North Korea has with China exposed North Korea to no liberalizing forces.
But now, North Korea’s elite often travel to China for business or diplomatic purposes or even vacation purposes. This gives the top level North Koreans a lot more exposure to the outside world. In the 1980s even the Kim inner circle actually weren’t that worldly, and while they probably were aware of the fact that the Kims were just ordinary humans who happened to be in charge when that’s the only world they know it makes any dissent very difficult. Now, the North Korean elite are much more worldly.
Of course, given Un’s harsh crack down on inner circle types who oppose them it’s not likely that just the elites being more worldly will lead to any type of reform. However, in northern North Korea there is a lot of interactions with the Chinese. Chinese businessmen regularly come into northern North Korea for business purposes and there are factories across the border into China where cheap North Korean labor comes across the river every day in work agreements with the Chinese. While they are gruff blue collar guys who also are probably selected for that work because of being particularly loyal and not prone to rabble rousing, there’s no way that their exposure to Chinese people in China has zero impact.
That’s a small thing, but most likely if North Korea is to continue to survive it will have to make more and more relationships like that with the Chinese. As the Chinese become more liberal, they will impart some of those values (even if to a very minor degree) on those North Korean workers. You might even eventually see China’s government start to pressure North Korea on some of its worst human rights abuses even if just out of an interest of seeing North Korean workers in Chinese factories treated appropriately by their own government. Abuses of blue collar workers tend to resonate in the Chinese press and most likely that will some day extend to North Korean workers who are working in Chinese factories.
North Korea is also working on building luxury tourist attractions, primarily geared toward wealthy Chinese tourists. That sort of thing at the very least means some level of normalized behavior, even if just in those tourist areas. Because wealthy tourists won’t go somewhere that they might be arrested for some minor protocol offense or a place that is portrayed in the media as being crazy and dangerous.
If China really wanted to end the Kim regime by force they could do so pretty much overnight, but China has no interest in that. China doesn’t even really seem to care if the Kim regime will reform. But, as “ordinary” (instead of just Chinese support payments) interactions with Chinese builds over time in the economic cooperation areas and as North Korea tries to appeal to Chinese tourists over time, I do think the fact that China is becoming more liberal over time will force North Korea to do the same. It’ll be very gradual at first, and I actually suspect it will be similar to the way in which China liberalized. That’s a process that started 40 years ago and is still nowhere near complete, and at times was almost imperceptible to the West, where many probably assumed China was just as repressive in 1985 as it was in 1970.
Where I think things will eventually get different, is many years down the road when North Korea has reformed, they will have to confront the fact that they have a monarchical dynasty ruling their country and not a party. The Communist Party in China has a changing cast of leadership, and even dissatisfaction with specific leaders doesn’t necessarily mean dissatisfaction with the party as a whole or the system of government. But in North Korea the power is really just held by one family (and specifically the current leader from that family), if the Kim dynasty wants to last “forever” then at some point they’d have to transition to some form of constitutional monarchs and create a party system similar to what China has. Most likely that won’t happen, and the greedy Kim dynasty (be it under Un or a successor) will eventually have liberalized too much in order to attract Chinese investment and will too late realize they have lost control of the ship.
I agree, even Rome with all of it’s armies and it’s military might ceased to exist due to political conflict from within.
Can a lie be uncovered by the truth? Can the darkness be uncovered by the light?
Yes and yes to the NKPR ending with Kim Jong-un … or there is another option.
He could start WWIII and become famous as all the other dummies in world history. :smack:
The actual ideology of North Korea–and this is no secret to anyone, inside or outside the country, familiar with the place-is “Military First”. I would find it quite odd if NK’s military were to jettison that plan. The thing keeping the place isolated from the rest of the world is their military.
Yes, it will.
Kim Jong-un is the last member of his family to sit at the head of the North Korean government and state.
What people seem to forget is that North Koreans are indoctrinated from almost birth to believe that Kim rules by divine right. He is (in their minds) descended from higher powers and his purpose on Earth is lead North Korea. While many in the military and intelligence power structure may not believe that (especially the closer they are to Kim on a daily basis) they know enough to keep quiet as their livelihoods and probably their lives depend upon him staying alive and in power.
There are no clear successors for Kim. His child ( he has a daughter) is only two years old and she obviously cannot assume his position if only because of her age. North Korea is also a patriarchal society so it’s doubtful that a woman ,regardless of her lineage, would be allowed to assume power. This all means that if Kim is incapacitated or killed, there would be a power vacuum and a struggle for control.
Since the military hasn’t shown itself to the true power in the country to the public (a la Egypt and Burma) it would have a difficult time convincing the NK public to go from a monarchy to a military dictatorship. WHile it could be done, any such government would be inherently fragile and it could count on South Korea, Japan and the US to make the transition difficult.
Frankly, I don’t even foresee Kim serving as long as his own father did. Things are changing rapidly around the world and North Korea’s continued belligerency along with China’s is going to result in a re-arming of Japan and a great US military presence in the region. Either event will will ear to encounters with North Korea and the probable topping of the Pyongyang government. Even if China intervened militarily, the aftermath of any such conflict (if it’s non-nuclear) would be far different than that of the Korean War as the winning combatants would no longer be satisfied with simply an armistice ad cessation of hostilities.
Prediction: The Kim dynasty ends with Jong-un and he doesn’t survive that ending. Any dictatorship following him will be short-lived as well.
It can’t last forever, and Kim Jong-Un could be expected to be in charge for a long time, so it may be a decent bet in that sense. But I’m not sure there is any reason to think it’s about to end. The food situation isn’t as desperate as it was in the '90s, for example. They’ll still be provocative internationally but I don’t think they’re anywhere near getting into a war. And the cost of addressing the country’s problems after the Kims are gone is going to be so steep that nobody is going to rush into it.
BTW, how’s that working out? What are things like in Libya these days?
The man is pretty young and given a few nubile concubines, he could have a half dozen little Kims added to the roster by next year. I wouldn’t put his current status in the baby department as a particularly good indication that there can never be a new generation to take over.
Word about the wealth & status of South Korea & the rest of the World is slowly leaking in, by way of DVDs & thumb drives.
Movies & TV from abroad are showing the people of North Korea that the Kims are lying. Support for, and belief in, North Korea & the Kims has never been weaker.
Even if he cranks out a few “young uns” (pun intended) they still have to make it to adulthood. And even if they do, they may still lose their lives in power struggle to become the successor.
Regardless if they do, North Korea is an artificial construct which exists solely due to China’s fear of having a true democracy on their border. Assuming that things don’t get any better in the country, that construct will continue to crumble and it will eventually collapse.
Stalin’s tyranny ended with his death, followed by an internal power struggle. Some people like Beria wanted control (and they would be just as bad), but others wanted reform. After Stalin died and Khrushchev took over the worst of the tyranny stopped.
I would assume something similar will happen in NK. I don’t think a popular uprising is possible. A popular uprising failed in Iraq, and Iraq wasn’t as brutal or totalitarian as north korea.
The elites in North Korea are supposedly worried that any reform will lead to massive revolt, the loss of their privileged status, and their torture/execution. But De-stalinization showed that it was possible to reform w/o that happening.
So I predict when enough of the North Korean elites realize their lives will be better under reform, then you could see reform. I would assume every member of Kim’s family would have to be murdered just to be sure. I don’t think letting another potential member of the Kim bloodline would allow people to truly feel the empire was over. The same way people in Iraq didn’t feel Saddam was truly gone until he was dead.
North Korea really can’t be accurately compared to either the Stalinist Soviet Union or Iraq. Neither regime deified their rulers in the same manner that North Korea has done with the Kim clan. If their “god” were to die, then there’s really no telling how the people of North Korea would or could respond.
Again, I see Japan’s eventual re-arming as the beginning of the end of North Korea. Since the US is treaty bound to defend Japan from attack, and since a resurgent Japan would threaten North Korea’s sense of security, I can foresee Kim’s belligerent behavior with missile and nuclear tests growing tiring to them. A North Korean strike or the capture or sinking of a Japanese vessel in the East China or Yellow Seas might be just the trigger needed to spark a regional conflict.
And after any war with either Japan, South Korea or the US and its allies in the area the Kim family dynasty will collapse.
Circumstances make Un more likely to precipitate a war or drop the last straw on China’s back than to allow any kind of effective reform. At least with China there’s a chance they cause an internal rebellion that limits the scope of an inevitable bloodbath. We all hope the ruling class will head down a road of reason, I just don’t see it happening.
This made me laugh hard.
Certainly; but that doesn’t make them invulnerable, it just means no one will see the collapse coming until it’s happening. To paraphrase an old line, “a dictatorship is a regime that looks invulnerable until the last fifteen minutes”. People used to think the Soviet Union would last for centuries too. The Kim regime might collapse next year, or it might last another 50 or more; but either way we probably won’t see the collapse ahead of time.
Nobody is ever going to shoot at N Korea. Ever.
No matter how beligerent N Korea acts–whether sinking Japanese ships, or capturing American prisoners (the Pueblo).
N Korea has nukes, and-unlike every other country on earth-it is willing to use them.
Every decent power in the world has plans and personnel ready to grab NK’s nukes.
If they ever manage a weapon that can be put on a missile and a missile which can actually hit a target, there will be some potentially scary moments while they are either relieved of one or both, or are made to understand that any attempt to but a warhead in the same province as a missile or (credible) bomber will be suicidal.
The DPRK has exactly one shot, should they attack either ROK or Japan. I don’t think Jong Un is stupid enough not to know that nor is he ready to get his country destroyed.
It would be nice to have a richer country to plunder, but being the boss, even the boss of a shithole, is better than anything he could hope to get by starting a war.
If he makes promises to the elite and can’t deliver (how’s those sanctions going, fat boy?), e may get demoted to figurehead (you can’t have the peasants wake up and find out he wasn’t really a god), but only a few would know who is really running the show.