Op ForeignAffairs.com is een interessant stuk van Noord-Korea-kenner Andrei Lankov verschenen over de politieke toekomst van Noord-Korea onder de leiding van Kim Jong-Un:
North Korea’s Choice: Collapse or Reform
The death of Kim Jong Il came unexpectedly this past weekend. Although he has visually aged much in recent years and was clearly in poor health, the news of his demise was almost a complete surprise. Indeed, in recent months, Kim Jong Il appeared to have recovered somewhat; he travelled extensively, seeming to slow the pace of dynastic transition to his son. Obviously, he did so on the assumption that he had more time to groom his heir, Kim Jon Un, to become the new leader of North Korea.
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Kim Jong Un’s most immediate task is to prevent any challenge from members of the top leadership. In most dictatorships, the chief bureaucrats and generals would feel ashamed to recognize a 29-year-old as the Supreme Leader, but North Korean leaders understand that instability in their divided country is likely to bring a crisis which, in turn, could provoke a popular revolution and eventual unification with the South. In such a scenario, the current elite would have no future.
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Under these circumstances, Kim Jong Un is likely to continue his father’s legacy. But that doesn’t mean that the current system will continue indefinitely. No country with a hyper-centralized, Stalinist economy has remained efficient for longer than two or three decades. It is difficult to see how or why North Korea could disprove this rule. The regime may maintain its centrally planned economy and political repression for now, but this will only prolong the country’s unsustainable stagnation. The longer North Korea’s rulers holds on to power, the greater the gap between Pyongyang and its neighbors will be – creating greater potential for future turmoil.
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