From the Daily NK: “7 out of 10 defectors forecast that the North Korean government led by Kim Jong Il has already passed its “critical limit” and that at the present stage looks as if the regime will only be able to maintain its position no longer than 10 years.”
A bit dated, but Yoelchae's write up on his trip to Kaesong in October is well worth the read.
- #New additions are: Andrei Lankov's blog (translated version via DPRK Forum); Saber Fencer; The Grand Narrative; Korea in Focus; KoreaArticle, and; Information Dissemination.
- #Via CNN: "An Iranian woman, blinded by a jilted stalker who threw acid in her face, has persuaded a court to sentence him to be blinded with acid himself under Islamic law demanding an eye for an eye... Her attacker... admitted throwing acid in her face in November 2004."
- #In an article at the Asia Times, Riddles and enigmas from North Korea, Andrei Lankov speculates on how governments get intelligence from inside North Korea, and lists some of the other valuable sources of information from the country.
- #
January 4th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I think they meant “critical mass.”
January 4th, 2007 at 7:15 am
While the DailyNK has excellent access to North Korean defectors, they don’t seem to utilize native English speakers as much as they probably could.
January 4th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
As I’ve said recently -
I have a gut feeling that if China and South Korea don’t find a way to significantly increase the amount of aid they give Pyongyang, and if the US does not cut a deal with NK to resume significant aid from beyond those two nations, NK will not come close to lasting 10 years.
I’ve placed my bet on 2 years maximum, but that was just a gamble. It might take 4 or 5, but I really don’t think it will take 10.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons the South Korean government is now talking about a NK-type Marshal Plan funded by SK alone if need be.
January 4th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
In the end, North Korea’s dissolution is inevitable, in my view, because the current political structure and the economic condition are unsustainable. The question, then, is when.
For something like this chaos theory is appropriate. As backward as North Korea is, it is still a highly complex system. There are numerous variables and the “initial conditions” as such are in constant flux.
I find that predicting the fall of North Korea is quantitatively much more difficult than that for the Soviet Union, mainly because input-output information is even more difficult to obtain for the former (likely however, the Chinese have far better intelligence than the U.S. does since China provides much of the energy and food inputs).
An insigificant event may snowball and suddenly trigger the fall in 2 years. Or the regime may extract enough and stabilize enough to go on for about 10 or even 20 years. I don’t think most of us have enough information to make even an informed guess of when.
January 4th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I agree with everything James wrote.
Predicting NK will fall before 2009 is a big change for me.
I’ve always pretty much rolled my eyes whenever I read or heard someone predicting the North would collapse before X date. I almost always said something like, “It would not be a big suprise if it fell apart tomorrow or if it falls about a couple of decades from now.”
But something about how things worked out in 2006 - and how those were connected to things before that - really makes me think that if things from the outside basically stay the way they are (with no let up on sanctions or significant increase in material/aid flowing in - it will not make it to 2009.
Time will tell…