SEOUL, 3 January 2005 — How long can the North Korean regime survive? A decade ago, it was taken as a matter of faith that it soon would be relegated to the same historical dustbin as the Soviet Union. But Kim Jong Il defied predictions of his political demise and embarrassed pundits stopped even broaching the topic of the regime’s life expectancy. Now, the subject is back on the table in a big way.
In South Korea, there are calls to update the government’s classified contingency plan — code-named Chungmu 3300 after a 16th-century military hero — to deal with a possible collapse of the North’s regime. The leading government think tank here is dusting off old social-science models designed for Eastern Europe in an attempt to predict how much longer Kim can last.
The Japanese media has been full of breathless rumors — most of which have proved untrue — of mass defections by the North Korean military and the circulation of anti-Kim brochures in the North. “The idea that North Korea is about to collapse is back in fashion,” said Jeung Young-Tai, a member of the team at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification.
The latest wave of speculation was triggered by reports in November out of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, that portraits of Kim had been removed from public buildings frequented by foreign diplomats. It later emerged that Kim himself had ordered the portraits removed to soften the cult of personality that has invited ridicule and unwelcome comparisons to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The speculation may have less to do with political forces inside North Korea than outside.
In particular, President Bush’s re-election has emboldened critics of the North Korean regime in the United States and in Asia who want Kim ousted. The North Korean Human Rights Act, passed in October, allocates up to $24 million to promote better conditions for North Koreans, and has revitalized an activist movement made up largely of Christian missionaries. The activists have flooded the Internet with unsubstantiated rumors about instability inside North Korea.
‘’We are seeing a lot of fabricated tales going around lately,” said Woo Jung Chang, an editor of the Chosun Monthly, an influential Seoul-based magazine.
The subject of North Korea’s stability is most sensitive in South Korea, where polls show that people are less fearful of a Communist invasion than they are of a messy collapse.
The South Korean government is so touchy about the issue that it recently threatened to prosecute an opposition assemblyman who publicly discussed the contingency plan for a North Korean collapse.
The strategy calls for the establishment of an interim civilian government to fill the vacuum that would be left by the collapse of the Pyongyang government and for emergency refugee shelters to be set up near the demilitarized zone separating the two nations.
“This is a realistic scenario and something we need to plan for and refine in detail. ... Instead, we’re not even allowed to talk about it,” said the assemblyman, Chung Moon Hun.
