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AGAIN: After a series of speculations and rumors of death and serious health problems, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suddenly appeared in public. The closed country remains as it has been since 1945. Photo: KCNA / REUTERS
When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un left for three weeks, rumors of his fate spread in all directions. But no one sits smart enough about what’s really going on in a closed state.
That is the conclusion and self-perception of various Korean experts in an article published in The New York Times. Seoul newspaper correspondent Choe Sang-hun, in charge of reporting on what is happening in democratic South Korea and the dictatorship north of latitude 38 on the Korean peninsula, has spoken to other Korean experts and He also did his own analysis of the situation on the Korean peninsula.
– The many anxious messages about the fate of Kim Jong-un and the future of North Korea once again showed how little the world knows about what is happening in this closed nuclear state and how vulnerable North Korea is to misconceptions. about the conditions there, writes The New York. Times correspondent.
He claims it is an alarming fact that the world simply has no idea what will happen in North Korea and the state’s nuclear weapons arsenal, should it prove that the leader is suddenly dying or out of action.
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COVID-19: North Korea with a poor health system and fraught with sanctions should be highly vulnerable to the corona virus, but authorities keep the death toll from the outside world hidden. Many people believe that there may be a virus explosion in the country. Photo: Jon Chol Jin / AP
Weaknesses revealed
– Unlike her grandfather and father, who spent many years preparing the preferred heir, Kim Jong-un (36) does not have an obvious heir to the family throne. She will have three children, but they are all too young to take control of the country. Her younger sister is a faithful counselor and co-worker, but she is skeptical of North Korean generals having to deal with a young leader, Choe Sang-hun writes.
“If anything, the past few weeks of heated speculation have revealed our weaknesses in intelligence and being able to report on what’s happening within North Korea’s borders,” said Jean H. Lee, a North Korean expert at Woodrow Wilson. . International Research Center in Washington DC
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If there is a perception that there is a leadership vacuum in North Korea, it could have dangerous consequences. The error information can lead to errors or accidental escalation of one part or the other, analysts told The New York Times.
BEFORE YOU ARE FAR: This will be one of the last photos taken by great leader Kim Jong-un, before all the information about him went numb, and the rumors and speculation took over. Photo: KCNA via KNS
For decades, the leaders of the Kim dynasty have had the habit of disappearing from the public for weeks and even months at a time. Each case has led to rumors of coups, assaults, and health crises, and has always been followed up and fueled by a lack of first-hand knowledge of North Korea’s leadership, writes the New York Times correspondent, and continues:
– This time was no different. Even two North Korean defectors, both recently elected to parliament in South Korea, and who could be expected to better predict the situation in the North than most, could say that Kim Jong-un was dead or seriously ill.
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Bloody settlement
Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international affairs at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, believes that the most important lesson to be drawn from North Korea’s “disappearance number” is that the international community “is not fully prepared for unstable conditions in North Korea. ”
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Other analysts tell the NYT that if Kim Jong-un dies, they fear that the country’s many nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and conventional weapons, plus an army of 1.2 million soldiers, could lead to an unpleasant and bloody settlement of the political power in North Korea.
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– The combination of nuclear weapons on the go and a political conflict is a nightmare scenario for the world. Political unrest could lead a faction or commander to threaten or, heaven forbid, launch a nuclear missile, said Danny Russel, chief scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute and former East Asian Secretary of State in administration of the United States under President Barack Obama.
PANMUNJOM: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is located on the border between South Korea and North Korea. Jens is in the south, the building behind him is in the north. Photo: Harald Henden
He says the first thing the United States should do if it is a fight for leadership in North Korea is to ensure oversight and control of North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
– But it will be made more difficult by the fact that the intelligence services do not know with certainty where it is located. North Korea has worked diligently to keep this hidden, Russel told the NYT.
China also fears an unstable North Korea, and some analysts believe, according to the NYT, that China could step in to gain control of its nuclear arsenal and deploy a new North Korean leader of its choice, the Kim Jong-un regime should collapse.
Others are skeptical that China would have succeeded in such a move, given the deep mistrust that exists and that has shaded the alliance between the two communist states. Furthermore comes the fact that many decades of indoctrination have made North Koreans suspicious and suspicious of any approach that is perceived as foreign intervention, be it from the United States or China.
