You may find it interesting to visit some relevant information dedicated to currency trading information

N.K. has 547km …

You are invited to take a look at the pages about flower edwards

Take your time to check the sites dedicated to rltt

It seems at times, a bullet in the back of the head and exile of a family member doesn’t produce the desired results. I have no idea that the right ingrediants are, but I seem to have gotten the idea from general reading of history in different places at different times, sometimes extreme brutality seeds greater unrest — pushes people to decide enough is enough, even if their family is secure.

My wild assed guess is that the middle ranks of the Korean military from low level officers to middle to high ranking non-officer types have some decent level of potential for subversion if pushed the right way.

Why?

It seems to me

Projecting a similar timeline onto the “life history” of the DPRK, 70 years from 1945 gives 2015 as a very approximate date for when internal dissension might reach “critical mass” in DPRK.

Other speculative considerations:
1) the slow infiltration of outside influences due to modern technology (videos, radios, internet) could speed the time up as mentioned above and elsewhere.

2) OTOH, the DPRK gulag system could slow it down (when it is viewed as a “training” method, one that brutalizes both the ruling elites and the soldiers/ secret police/ border guards to cruel punishment and agonizing death).

Not many will risk listening to a smuggled-in radio or watching a video if the penalty for being caught is a bullet in the back of the head and the exile of the family to a prison camp.

Regarding information getting into the North, apart from the slow infiltration of ideas via reports about the outside world from returnees from China and smuggled videos and DVDs, I have read that members of the elite listen to VOA now. So there is at least that one potential pipeline.

Anyway, my point here is really that for the scenario to happen I outlined in the other comment to happen, the NK people revolting would have to be effective enough to keep it alive for more than a week, and probably images of it would need to get outside to the world media. Rwanda, perhaps, wasn’t so much an example of the outside world not caring. It seemed to happen so fast - even if on such a large scale - the world community didn’t catch up, because it is very slow to pull the trigger.

If a revolt does manage to survive past the initial fury of the government backed forces, I can’t predict what will happen. I am pretty sure South Korea would fight to keep any nation(s) from getting involved if they had the slightest hope the North Korean regime was going to be successful in crushing the revolt.

That play alone would make every other nation’s reaction limited or awkward.

The US could set up plans where we omit USFK forces but never the less jump into NK if a prolonged massacre is taking place and the opportunity to step in and put an end to the Kim Jong Il regime and the bloodshed seemed ripe.

Hope for such an event might be very key into whether key military figures in North Korea would back Pyongyang or avoid suppressing the revolt. If unit commanders to generals are convinced the US is coming in no matter what, and the US piped in information that leaders who get their men to lay down their arms will be treated fairly in the next regime, it would probably be easier for them to lay down their arms or turn them on the regime. It might happen on a scale even bigger than in Iraq War II — or it might not and the North Korea army would fight as best it can with a revolt and invasion taking place.

It’s impossible to predict what kind of US force would be necessary. It might be as small as a Haiti or a good sized fighting force.

If it is a good sized force, and it has to come from non-USFK assests because of South Korea’s position on the revolt, I’d hate to be South Korea when the dust settled. I’m trying to imagine what I’d think of my brothers to the south if I were a North Korean having lived in hell and realized SK refused to lift a finger to help me when I needed it most…..It might make regionalism in South Korea return to pre-modern days.

Internally, the deciding factor would be what the military didthe turning point in these situations often seems to be the point at which soldiers just decide to stop resisting the protestors.

In terms of the outside world, I just sincerely hope that the scenario you’re envisioning (the country’s neighbours standing idly by while all this unfolds) does not materialize, and that, were it to come to such a situation, all parties involved realized that interventionor at the very least not turning back refugees at Panmunjom or Dandongwould be the best solution.

One of the great tragedies of the North Korean famine is something I haven’t read anybody in the media or think-tank group mention