UPDATE: This blog post over at Adamu’s Jappanica — dealing with one Japanese pundit’s forecast of the imminent (by 2008) post-NK future — is a MUST READ.
ORIGINAL POST: James Brooks over at the NYT reports on some of the bizarre signs coming out of North Korea (or coming out of the press about North Korea), including talk of imminent regime change in Japan and rumors of a Chinese-backed military coup. Things like this:
After weeks of reports from North Korea of defecting generals, antigovernment posters and the disappearance of portraits of the country’s ruler, the leader of Japan’s governing party warned Sunday of the prospects of “regime change” in North Korea.
“As long as Chairman Kim Jong Il controls the government, we have to negotiate with him, but it is becoming more doubtful whether we will be able to achieve anything with this government,” said Shinzo Abe, acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, on Fuji TV, referring to talks on North Korea’s abductions of Japanese in the 1970’s. “I think we should consider the possibility that a regime change will occur, and we need to start simulations of what we should do at that time.”
By breaking an unspoken taboo on talking publicly about “regime change” in North Korea, the powerful Japanese politician underlined a feeling spreading in the region that cracks are starting to show in the Kim family’s control over North Korea after nearly 60 years.
And this:
In Seoul, an editor at Monthly Chosun, a magazine that closely follows North Korean affairs, said in an interview that when he was in northern China earlier this year, Chinese officials showed him North Korean wanted posters for generals who had managed to reach China with their families. The editor, who asked not to be identified, estimated that in recent years, 130 North Korean generals had defected to China, about 10 percent of the military elite.
Of this group, the most significant, he said, are four who have been integrated into active duty with the Chinese military in the Shenyang district, along the Korean border.
…
Now, the South Korean editor speculated, China may be forming a fallback plan should Kim Jong Il prove incapable of reforming or holding on to power. “The scenario the Chinese are looking into is to make a buffer regime through such North Korean general defectors,” he said.
Dude, this is Tom Clancy-esque stuff. Unfortunately, caveats abound. This, for starters:
Persistent reports that anti-Kim leaflets and posters have recently appeared gained more credibility with the publication last Thursday in Sankei Shimbun, a conservative Tokyo newspaper, of what was described as a photograph of a hand-printed flyer smuggled out of North Korea.
Firstly, nothing ever gains more credibility by being printed in the Sankei. If the Sankei ran a piece tomorrow that said the Earth revolved around the sun, I’d start questioning Copernicus. The photo of the flyer was handed to the paper, by the way, by Kim Dok-hong, who defected to South Korea along with former Workers Party secretary Hwang Jang-yop in 1997. This is the same man who earlier told the Sankei he was in contact with “anti-state” groups in North Korea that had told him the Ryonchon Station disaster was staged by the Kim Jong-il himself to instigate a purge of the party and get rid of some defective missiles they were planning to export to Syria. Well, maybe I’m just incurably skeptical (which helps with North Korea, as you never get disappointed), so draw your own conclusions.
Then there’s the story of the Chinese coup. Look at the source — the Monthly Chosun, and in particular, an editor who who preferred not to be named, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was Cho Gap-je. Now, the Monthly Chosun says a lot of interesting things, but it also runs a lot of crap. Cho himself apparently knows people who, in turn, know things (or so I was told by a blogger who shall remain nameless), and he likes Mongolians (which makes him cool), but like with the magazine he runs, you have to take what he says with more than a grain of salt. Anyway, regardless of whether it was Cho who spoke to the Gray Lady or not, the very fact that it was a guy at Monthly Chosun talking should send up red flags. Doesn’t mean the “Chinese military coup” theory should be automatically discounted, but the Word of God it isn’t.
Anyway, read the NYT piece for yourself, and while you’re at it, check out NKZone’s coverage of the signs coming out of Pyongyang — it’s excellent.
12 Comments
Given your high level of respect for the journalistic integrity of the Sankei, you might also point out that Fuji TV is the broadcast version of the Sankei, and that Abe is one of the most hawkish LDP members when it comes to NK (that’s one of the main reasons why he has become so popular in Japan of late).
Check out the Sankei article here:
http://www.sankei.co.jp/news/0.....iti001.htm
It’s funny, I don’t think the reports of soldiers leaving North Korea in group are all that new. The other night a TV “military analyst”, giving a speech here in DC for a Japanese Student Organization, mentioned the same thing.
Talk of regime change in NK is not only coming from LDP leaders. Motoaki Kamiura, who is supposedly the most visible pundit in Japan, didn’t hesitate to predict that by the 2008 Olympics in Beijing there won’t even be a North Korea. Cooperative exercises between national and local security forces in Japan are already preparing for a possible influx of refugees. He gave a few reasons why NK will collapse and what should happen afterward. Essentially he dismissed NK as a threat entirely. My report on the meeting can be found here .
Regime Change in DPRK
Regime change? What’s all this talk about regime change? I hereby announce regime change in Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea!
Thanks for linking to my NK article. I had 140 individual hits today, my best day yet by far! I’m sure it’s small compared to your hit count but I appreciate it nonetheless.
“If the Sankei ran a piece tomorrow that said the Earth revolved around the sun, I?€™d start questioning Copernicus.”
The earth does orbit the sun. You mean the other way round
NK collapse soon? Wishful thinking. If that is true, wouldn’t that make SK’s sunshine policy of appeasment to ease the cost of reunification, right thing to do (in light of the fact that NK is so weak right now that they are not a threat)?
On the second thought, I just read this article: there’s no excuse for this. Truely disgusting.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpag.....510230.htm
‘Say Hello to My Little Friend…’
Somehow I don’t think the nork military top dog would vacation in the Carribean Worker’s Paradise if something strange was brewing at home (Photo courtesy ChosunJournal’s Deck of Cards) North Korea’s top military officer visits Cuba HAVANA (AFP) No…
kimbob, even if North Korea’s economy has collapsed, it is still a threat. It spends almost as much per capita on the military as South Korea. It is far from harmless.
Not to mention the North Korean export of missiles also makes the world as less safe place. And if the North started selling nuclear bombs, then North Korea would probably bear responsibility if a nuclear war broke out. The international reputation of Korea would be blackened for generations as the people who sold nuclear bombs that senselessly killed millions. So North Korea is still a threat.
Kimbob, don’t you think you are being a bit of a elitist when you claim that you believe that the Korean hoi polloi aren’t mature enough to live their lives without the NSL? I wonder if you feel the same way about the USA Patriots Act. Let me tell you, I DESPISE those Hanchongryun Hongdae f&8kfaces, but I can’t really blame their existence since it was really the Korean conservatives who gave birth to them.
It seems to me all about guilt by association in Korea. Oh so-and-so’s grandfather was a Japanese lackey so he must be a right wing freak. So-and-so is from Jeollado, she must be a bbal-chi-san. So-and-so said that he hates Kim Jong Il, he must be an American puppet. and so on and so forth.
What we need now is some cold dash of truth not coddling the masses into their wishful dreamlike trance they are all in. NSL is part of that problem. Because of the NSL, all the communists in Korea who would be ignored without the NSL gains credibility as victimized. Because of the NSL, South Korean politics is corrupted, and the young automatically dismisses the old, and the young associates guilt to the old generation. If there is one thing No Moo Hyun regime will be credited for doing any sort of good deed, it would be repealing the NSL. There is a real reason why people in Kwangju and Jejudo can’t stand Hannara motherf&8kfaces. The real shame is that they have turned anti-americans, but the blame belongs just as much on the Korean conservatives as Korean liberals.
I read Adamu’s comment on the post-NK future. It seemed very cogent, the speaker had some excellent insights. However, I think that the most likely reason for NK to cease to exist would be by “merging” with China, either voluntarily or otherwise. Why would China like to see Korean reunification, except to impoverish the south?
“When North Korea inevitably collapses and is reunited with the South, it is a foregone conclusion that the newly unified Korean state will form a military alliance with the United States. China is likely to tolerate this alliance provided that no American troops are actually stationed on the Korean Peninsula. Why would China put up with this? Because without a U.S.-Korea alliance, there would be nothing to stop Japan from becoming a major military power, which China fears even more. Also, China needs Japanese and American investments to develop the northeast part of the country, so it has to play along to some extent.”
One persuasive argument is China’s latest “redefinition” of parts of North Korea as belonging to China, not Korea. Sounds like justification for another Manchurian Incident to me.
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