News outlets around the world were all abuzz yesterday with the news that North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, had finally expired. Nobody really knows the truth about when and how he died, since the North is one of the world’s most secretive and closed states. However, the international community speculates that he finally crashed after suffering a stroke a few years back.
News of his death was announced by this crying old lady, dressed in a black traditional hanbok, on state tv:
North Korea has been in a tailspin for the past decade or so. The state-controlled economy is totally breaking down, with food and basic commodities becoming more and more scarce. Things seem more unstable than ever for the nutjob regime. This could be a critical moment.
Americans are jubilant about Kim Jong Il’s demise, because they hated the old bastard. Seoul saw public celebrations filled with old men who were veterans of the war against his father’s army. Meanwhile, most leaders in Asia are worried that some major shit is about to go down. When the news broke yesterday that the Dear Leader was no more, South Korean corporate execs and government officials all headed to huge meetings to plan for the worst. American military officials worked with South Korean leaders to beef up security at the border. Anything could happen. The Wall Street Journal wonders, tongue in cheek, if the famous "Kim Jong Il looking at things" blog will survive. PBS ran a video about Pyongyang's massive state mourning display:
So what was my reaction? As an American expat living in Seoul?
“OH FUCK! I really hope that North Korea doesn’t collapse overnight, and cause mass chaos that makes my South Korean paycheck totally worthless.”
Note that this is something that South Koreans have been worried about for years. No one really knows how North Korea has managed to avoid total collapse for so long; all rational observers have predicted it for decades. But if it all comes crashing down one night, like the Berlin Wall, a huge humanitarian crisis will be one of the inevitable results. And that, my friends, will be very, very expensive.
South Korea doesn’t really have the resources to deal with that. And, while division was very painful for the older generation, nowadays many South Koreans don’t even want reunification. It would mean dumping all of their money for decades into building basic infrastructure, schools, roads, and everything else that the impoverished North does not have.
North Korea is not as abysmally poor as say, Somalia, but things are pretty bleak there. They do have factories and power plants, but – other than Kim Jong Il’s famous nuclear plans – time basically stopped in the 50’s. Vice magazine said that going to Pyongyang a few years back was like visiting Stalinist Russia. It would also take a ton of time and money to retrain – on a deep psychological level – North Koreans to live in the same world that the rest of the world does. A world run by capitalism, with totally different rules, and where half the things they have been taught their whole lives are totally wrong. Starting with the famous myth that Kim Jong Il is immortal, and so great that he neverpoops.
The best comparison for Korean reunification is that of former East and West Germany after the end of the Cold War. East Germany was communist for decades, and despite lots of development money from the German government, that region remains a lot poorer. If you follow Germany in the news, you have probably been reading about neo-nazi gangs of young, unemployed kids wreaking havoc. Most of them are from what used to be East Germany. Communism’s dysfunctional culture, and its problems, doesn’t just go away overnight.
And East Germany is way more developed than North Korea. The comparison pretty much falls down when you realize the incredibly disparities between the Korean North and South. In the South kids are growing up playing Wii, learning English at school from people like my expat friends, and eating hamburgers at Burger King. While in the North, people are freezing and starving and wishing that they could have half the things we do.
American are hopeful that Kim Jong-Il’s death will usher in a new era of freedom and peace. But that seems unlikely. North Korea is incredibly alienated from the world, but it does have one powerful buddy: China. And China’s power is on the rise. China props up most of the North’s terminally ill economy, and that is the only thing keeping it from collapsing overnight.
South Koreans know this, and many of them claim that China only does all this for its own pragmatic benefit. If North Korea fell apart, lots of refugees would be streaming over all the borders. And that means millions of desperate North Koreans would be headed into Chinese Manchuria. This would be a big mess. So China sends lots of money and food to their friends in Pyongyang. The North Korean state is on life support, but all the big players are scared of change.
As this Reuters article argues, North Korea may not change as much as many Americans have been led to expect.
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