TOKYO, 21 December 2004 — A lone assassin’s bullet, a coup by elite cadres, or a gradual process of reform and transition: Scenarios for political change in autocratic North Korea abound.
Rumors are swirling that 62-year-old North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s grip on power is weakening, but few experts are willing to predict precisely how or when his regime might unravel.
Many agree, though, that a sudden shock to Kim’s autocratic regime would be more likely to create chaos than yield an orderly transfer of power to a benign ruler willing to abandon nuclear arms and missile programs.
“If we take the long view, the collapse of North Korea’s system has already begun,” said Masao Okonogi, a Korea specialist at Keio University in Tokyo.
“The question is, how will the ending be played out?”
“The transformation needs to happen before Kim hands over to a successor and (other countries) need to push for that, but it is not that easy. There could be a crisis or serious confusion.”
The view that a gradual “regime transformation” is more desirable than an abrupt “regime change” seems to have gained backers in Washington, Okonogi and other analysts in Tokyo said.
US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly told Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper that President George W. Bush was not seeking to topple Kim’s administration, but instead was urging it to open up gradually to lay the groundwork for “regime transformation”, the newspaper reported at the weekend.
US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s designated successor, Stephen Hadley, made similar remarks to South Korean lawmakers, South Korean media reported this month.
“It seems they have begun to think that ‘regime change’ is not that easy,” Okonogi said.
To be sure, talk of “regime change” persists among US hard-liners and the notion has recently been floated in Japan, where anger over Pyongyang’s failure to clarify the fate of citizens abducted decades ago has boosted calls for sanctions.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is cautious about imposing economic sanctions for fear of thwarting efforts to resume six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.
But ruling Liberal Democratic Party executive Shinzo Abe has mentioned regime change as an option and Tsutomu Takebe, the party’s No. 2, said this month Japan should consider “emancipating” North Koreans from the regime.
“I think what Takebe was probably talking about was to contain them from the outside and promote internal collapse,” said Noriyuki Suzuki, a senior analyst at Radiopress, which monitors North Korean media. “If the domestic economy deteriorated, then anti-Kim forces might emerge.”
Proponents of “regime transformation” favor an opposite approach to achieve a similar end but without triggering the chaos, civil war and floods of refugees that would threaten neighboring China, South Korea and Japan.
“What they are thinking of is that by promoting economic reforms in North Korea, a more open system will emerge,” Suzuki said.
