IMAGINING THE NEXT NORTH KOREA
Philip Bowring
International Herald Tribune, September 21, 2008
Forecasting what might happen should Kim Jong Il die or become incapacitated in the near future is mostly futile. The Pyongyang leadership is as secretive about its internal politics as the Kremlin or the Forbidden City was in the heyday of Stalin or Mao.
The vacuum of real information has enabled some of the wilder scenarios to flourish. One is that the death of the "Dear Leader" will be the end of the Kim Il Sung dynasty and that the government will collapse as quickly as the Ceaucescu regime in Romania in 1989. That will lead to the reunification of North and South, just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall quickly led to the reunification of Germany.
Desirable as this might be in principle, it would create devastating economic and social problems for the South, and upset the strategic balance in northeast Asia.
Alternatively, a collapse of the regime would cause a broad breakdown in governance, a collapse of institutions that would make North Korea a failed state in political as well as economic terms, creating huge humanitarian problems.
(...) [artículo aquí]
Philip Bowring
International Herald Tribune, September 21, 2008
Forecasting what might happen should Kim Jong Il die or become incapacitated in the near future is mostly futile. The Pyongyang leadership is as secretive about its internal politics as the Kremlin or the Forbidden City was in the heyday of Stalin or Mao.
The vacuum of real information has enabled some of the wilder scenarios to flourish. One is that the death of the "Dear Leader" will be the end of the Kim Il Sung dynasty and that the government will collapse as quickly as the Ceaucescu regime in Romania in 1989. That will lead to the reunification of North and South, just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall quickly led to the reunification of Germany.
Desirable as this might be in principle, it would create devastating economic and social problems for the South, and upset the strategic balance in northeast Asia.
Alternatively, a collapse of the regime would cause a broad breakdown in governance, a collapse of institutions that would make North Korea a failed state in political as well as economic terms, creating huge humanitarian problems.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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