Since way back in the Before Time the world has been magically blessed with 2 Koreas - the yankee part is little more than a starving, slave trading underground rocket factory with an unfree, unfun new clear weaponized nation state attached
And NoKo's history has been prett weird.
Still...
For all the unfounded speculation and hand-wringing about the unprecedented political turmoil on North Korea, most of it in inverse proportion to actual knowledge of the situation, too little thought has been given to the potential consequences of instability there. Kim may well have consolidated his rule. But there is also the possibility the Jang purge was a sneak preview of the future that factional strife among contending political elites and a possible budding middle class with unmet expectations lies ahead.
To be fair, history is littered with erroneous predictions by Asia hands about North Korea. At each juncture – the end of the Cold War and Soviet support, the death of founder Kim Il Sung, and more recently, the death of Kim Jong Il, predications of North Korea’s imminent collapse have proven wrong.
But it is also possible that the Jang episode may mark the beginning of an unraveling of the Kim dynasty. The dangers of loose nukes, refugees heading North to China and South to the ROK, chaos, possible intervention by China and/or the ROK, or the US seeking to control nukes, and a precipitous reunification by default all hold the prospect of an inflection point approaching in Northeast Asia. Stay Tuned.
Pic - "The Great Kim Il Sung was firmly convinced that as long as there were the people, the territory and the Party, a new life could be built."
