Beijing
Intelligence sources and other observers both here in the capital of the PRC and elsewhere in Asia are stating that they project a possible collapse of the North Korean regime within six months time.
Although there have been similar dire predictions made in the past, those analyzing the current situation point to several factors that indicate that the regime may finally be unraveling.
Recent activity by both Kim Jong-Il and other DPRK officials suggest that the Dear Leader is in the process of moving around the financial resources of Pyongyang's international banking empire in order to make sure he is taken care of should he have to go into exile. This includes a recent visit to the United States by North Korean finance officials who were visiting to learn about the international financial circulation network.
Ostensibly, this visit was preparatory work that would allow the country to re-join the international financial system. This is the next, anticipated step for Pyongyang once the regime has negotiated its removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. The DPRK are also seeking an end to their being subject to the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act first imposed during the Korean War by President Harry Truman.
But, there are others who suggest that this is also part of a contingency plan in order to make Kim's assets "portable."
While the Dear Leader is engaged in financial matters, other reports state that there are movements of U.S. and South Korean military units and equipment to the DMZ in what appears to be a pre-positioning exercise in anticipation of some internal upheavals in the north.
Indications that the regime is possibly losing its grip and that Kim may be failing to maintain control over events are seen in what happens both inside--and how people are managing to get outside of--the country.
A recent article in the Washington Post details how it has become far easier and more common for North Koreas to find ways of getting out of their country. How much money you have determines how arduous and circuitous your escape route might be.
The key factor to watch is how rapidly the numbers of people fleeing are increasing. Only 41 North Koreans were able to reach the South in 1995, but the rate of those escaping has grown each year and last year it reached 2,000. What makes these multiple escape routes out of the country possible is that there are a growing number of DPRK border guards and secret police officials who are willing to take bribes to allow their fellow countrymen to escape.
North Korea watchers regard this as a telltale sign of the regime losing its control. Part of the motivation for these border control officials' desire to collect bribes is that the centrally-controlled economy has ceased to function and the food distribution system is nearly as broken. But, the other side of the coin, they say, is that those accepting these under-the-table payments do not fear the punishment of higher-ranking authorities as much as they once did.
Equally indicative of how little Pyongyang can now affect the outward flow of asylum seekers is how harsh the retributions have become for the relatives left behind.
"During the famine years of the 1990s Pyongyang was more or less lax about punishing those who left, with the result that there were North Koreans going back and forth across the border with some regularity," said one Beijing-based western analyst. "These people would go into China, make some money, buy some food and medical supplies, and then bring this all back to their families. The North Korean regime looked the other way on these transgressions, but today deportation to a labor camp of the relatives of those who have escaped becoming more and more common. This increasing severity is a sign that they have no way of stopping this."
Within the country Kim also appears to be trying to circle the wagons by placing close relatives in key positions and positioning one of his sons to possibly succeed him.
Last week Jang Song Thaek, Kim's brother-in-law, was installed as the country's chief internal security supervisor. Jang had been Kim's right-hand man until he disappeared, apparently demoted in early 2004 for criticizing the country's economic policy. But, it is suspected that Jang, who married Kim Jong Il's younger sister, Kyong Hui, in 1972, was really pushed out three years ago because the Dear Leader viewed him as a possible pretender to the throne.
Now Jang will have more power than before, since he will be in charge of the country's international security organizations and the judiciary. His political rehabilitation and promotion into this once dormant and re-created position is a sign that Kim fears the growing power of his other deputies and seeks to keep them off-balance.
At the same time, Kim's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, is reported to have taken up a senior post in Pyongyang earlier this year as the head of the Worker's Party organization and guidance department. The younger Kim was educated in Switzerland, speaks fluent French, and is reported to be well-educated in the use of computer systems. He was seen earlier this month in Paris for what was described as specialized dental care.
Hints have been made in the past that he was his father's pick as the next "Dear Leader," but this may not go down well with others in the ruling circle, or with his younger half-brothers, Jong Chul and Jong Woon. The possibility of a struggle for succession is fraught with any number of unpleasant scenarios.
"No one wants the DPRK to collapse," said the Beijing-based analyst. "It is to everyone's advantage for it to stay just as it is." South Korea is at the top of list of those who do not want to see the regime implode. With a population of 23 million, the DPRK has only half the number of people as South Korea. But, the adverse economic impact on the South trying to absorb millions of starving northerners and rebuild the impoverished communist state's nearly non-existent infrastructure would be many times worse than the pains suffered by Germany in the 1990s when it was reunified with the five states of the former Communist German Democratic Republic.
But it is here in Beijing that a possible North Korean implosion causes perhaps the most anxieties. China would likely be flooded with as many as, if not more, refugees than South Korea. It would face the unhappy choices of either taking them all in and diverting huge amounts of resources to care for them, or trying to close the border with a massive military presence.
Beijing, like Seoul, is haunted by the spectre of the North's fissile material and whatever exists of its nuclear weapons program falling into the wrong hands. But the larger worry here is the damage that could be done to the PRC's image if it would use military force to keep starving northerners on their side of the border fence.
To even the most casual of observers here in the capitol, it is obvious that China is building up towards next year's Olympic Games with the theme that this will be the nation's shining moment and a symbol of having entered the club of modern, industrialized nations. The possibility of at the same time having to use guns and barbed wire against a wave of refugees--and that this once-in-a-lifetime moment for China could be tarnished by just such a scenario--is probably the greatest nightmare for the government in Beijing. All of which has everyone here hoping that the Kim regime hangs in for longer than just another six months.
