Girding for 'Implosion'
North Korea may be collapsing. The risk of conflict isn't
The peaceful transition some other Communist states have navigated seems unlikely in North Korea. Economic reform means opening the borders to foreign trade and investment, and open borders would mean exposing North Koreans to the knowledge of how pitiful their living conditions are compared with the rest of the world--and with South Korea in particular, where per capita GNP is more than 10 times that of the north. "Loosening up means the big lie is exposed," says a U.S. intelligence officer in South Korea.
By the book. The suffering and hardship that have struck North Korea so far roughly coincide with the first several phases of collapse outlined in a research paper written by Bob Collins, a member of the U.S. military planning staff in Seoul. Military commanders are using the paper as an informal guide for analyzing events in North Korea.
So far, widespread hardship has not translated into organized resistance to the government. "Nobody is blaming Kim for the country's problems," says the U.S. intelligence officer. "That worries us a little. It's not what we'd expect." At some hard-to-predict point, however, the Collins paper predicts that resistance will finally erupt if the downward spiral continues, testing the ability of North Korea's five KGB-like security organizations to suppress it. Opposition could quickly gain the support of key government and military officials. That would lead to the final two phases of collapse: fracture of the regime and some kind of realignment of the government in which Kim and many of his handpicked lieutenants would be purged. This endgame will be "difficult without an extreme amount of violence," argues Collins. At some point, military units would be sent into action against fellow citizens--and against each other, as the crisis degenerated into civil war.
The outbreak of civil war in North Korea could hasten the end of the oppressive Kim government. But to military strategists, it is a powder keg of potentialities. The north's huge inventory of chemical weapons and perhaps one or two nuclear bombs could fall into unknown hands. If not used, they could be sold for ready cash to international terrorists.
As civil war erupted, some troops along the demilitarized zone would almost certainly try to escape into the south. If they fled in large numbers, their commanders--probably under threat of execution for allowing mass defections--might be forced to call for artillery fire to head them off. To the South Korean troops dug in at the border, a horde of rampaging northerners backed by exploding artillery would look a lot like an invasion, possibly prompting return fire--and the possible outbreak of the Second Korean War. Defense officials particularly worry that the north's withdrawal in 1994 from official military-to-military dialogue leaves no forum to resolve misunderstandings.
If Kim's control of the military begins to slip, he may choose another and far more desperate path: a pre-emptive attack on the south in a last-ditch effort to hold on to his one bargaining chip with the world, his Army of 1.2 million. A strike against the south in these circumstances would probably be calculated to focus his forces on external rather than internal enemies. While such a move might seem suicidal, one military official in South Korea points out that Iraq's Saddam Hussein survived the gulf war--a conflict North Korea has studied intently. North Korea's 10,000 artillery pieces and huge special operations force would very likely achieve widespread destruction before U.S. and South Korean forces brought them to heel.
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