The Future of the North Korean Regime
Video Transcript:
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, Stratfor cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Video Transcript:
Brian Genchur: Hello, I'm Brian Genchur with Stratfor's Vice President of East Asia analysis, Rodger Baker, and today we will be discussing the future of the North Korean regime, its internal weaknesses and the external factors that are shaping it.
Rodger, North Korea is currently ruled by Kim Jong Un, the grandson of founder Kim Il Sung. Now these are two very different men; the grandson, for instance, went to boarding school in Switzerland, and the founder was a battle-hardened military leader. Now, can you describe in some detail the personalities and characteristics of these successive North Korean generational leaders?
Rodger Baker: Yeah, I think as we look at North Korea there are very distinct differences as we watch these leadership transitions. Kim Il Sung was an anti-Japanese fighter, he was a liberator of Korea. He and his cohorts really had the support of the people because they were independence fighters. In some sense they even had support from the South Korean side, even if for political reasons they couldn't, there was a sense that they deserved to be in the positions in which they were in.
His son, Kim Jong Il, and that generation of leaders really only held their positions because of their parents. They had training in Eastern Europe, they had training in the Soviet Union, they had training maybe in China, but their positions and their hold on power was based on who their father was.
This new generation that's coming in that we first see with Kim Jung Un and we haven't seen yet spread to other elements of the leadership structure, really again it is generational, it comes because of who their parents were and who their grandparents were, but it's a very different entity. These people have been educated (many in Western countries), they're not connected to the years of North Korean terrorism. They have an ability to really change the direction of the country, but only as we start to see critical mass of these third-generation leaders take power.
Brian: Rodger, you and Robert D. Kaplan recently wrote an article saying that North Korea could either unravel and have a massive humanitarian crisis or they could start selling off some state assets and kind of start to model their economy on China -- which do you see as the more likely scenario, and how might that come about?
Rodger: I think as we look at this third-generation leadership, they can gain and retain power, influence and importance through the slow sale of North Korea, basically selling the country out. Looking at models like China, looking at models like Indonesia, trying to find ways where they can retain political influence, a hold over economic control, but not necessarily have to be isolated from the international system. It's not necessarily easy for them to maintain that.
The problem is that there are a lot of individuals within the North Korean elite structure who have a vested interest in the current status quo. Even if the country could be better off economically, even if there could be more money coming into the country, they would lose power, they would lose influence, they would lose control and they would lose access to it. And therefore they're going to be pushing against it. Also as you look at one of these types of transitions in economic systems, it has a big impact on the social system and they can lose control of it very quickly. And so even if they work towards trying to find a transitional method of economic activity, a transitional method of political activity, it can backfire, it can fall apart and they can fall into humanitarian issues.
Brian: Now I think it's pretty clear that South Korea and China will be most affected by a regime change in North Korea. What kind of future does each of those countries want for the North, and how would that affect their interests in the region?
Rodger: In some sense, China likes to keep North Korea as a buffer state. It effectively keeps U.S. troops away from the Chinese border. It also keeps the U.S. forces focused on something other than China -- there is a huge number of land forces there, they've got to be looking at the concept of a potential North Korean invasion if it ever comes, and that keeps them distracted and focused.
The South Koreans ultimately would like unification, but they would like unification on their terms; they don't want to inherit a failed state, they want for a phased unification that allows them first to build up the infrastructure, build up the economic activity, and then modify the social activity of North Korea so that North Koreans are better able to integrate into a unified Korean structure. If we see a breakdown of the North Korean system, obviously you have populations rushing both into South Korea and rushing into China. You have questions of what happens to the North Korean arms, what happens to the guns -- maybe the nuclear weapons are under control, but a lot of the conventional weapons simply move and disappear. They may spread into northern China, they may go into the black markets into China and Mongolia, they may go spread through South Korea, they may go by boat to Japan. These are some of the issues even beyond the basic question of how do you feed all of the North Koreans, how do you put them into locations that allow them to still live, how do you avoid having them slip often and become parts of gangs or roving populations or unemployed or things of that sort; these movements of weapons becomes a particular consideration for the Chinese.
Brian: And we'll have to leave it there, thank you Rodger. And if you would like more on North Korea, visit www.stratfor.com. Thank you for watching.
