Kim Among The Pigeons

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Thursday September 11, 2008 11:08 by Park Life

The Dear Leader may be leaving the stage. The next act is uncertain

At the elaborately staged 60th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the North Korean Stalinist State, the "Dear Leader", Kim Jong IL was conspicious by his absence.
It is believed that he may have suffered a stroke (Kim is alleged to enjoy cigars, booze and teenage girls while his devoted subjects make do eating grass). At the edge of 66, Kim, like 72 year old John McCain, is no spring chicken and the demise of his personal brand of socialism is sure to end relatively soon if the rumours of his ill-health are unfounded.

It has even been alleged that Kim actually died a number of years ago and a clique of his generals have rolled out a fleet of impersonators. After high level negotiations between Kim and high level South Korean officials, an audio recording of his voice was analysed against previous samples and found to have a range of subtle differences suggesting the person on the recording was someone else.
If Kim is no more or soon to become an historical curiosity for devotees of dictator kitsche, what next for North Korea?
If Kim is dying or indeed dead, there are factions within the North Korean military who want to control the country and shore up their careers and personal wealth in a society that has little economic activity to speak of and where devasting famines are frequent and the continued submission of its citizens is maintained by a vast infrastructure of labour camps.
North Korea has no international trade to speak of.
To obtain vital supplies of fuel and food, the government uses its nuclear industry as a crucial bargaining chip with its free democratic Western style capitalist southern neighbour, an economic powerhouse in Asia.
The Stalinist system is creaking loudly and in danger of collapse.
The international community can only be concerned at the possible disintegration of North Korea, who will have the finger on the nuclear button, if the country will degenerating into warlordism and the hordes of starvingNorth Korean who flood over the borders of China and South Korea.
The question is which world superpower will fill the breech?
North Korea was once a client state of the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, allegiance shifted to China.
China might well cross the Yalu River and encorporate North Korea just as it encorporated Tibet (at that time another reclusive, economically backward, reclusive dictatorship led the Dalai Lama bizarrely feted by the Hollywood elite).
China although still brutally authoritarian is a now modernising and increasingly prosperous society having abandoned Maoist insanity.
North Korea might be better off.
The United States, South Korea and Japan would beg to differ.
Either North Korea becomes a full democratic Western syle capitalist society or it can rot.
The stage could well be set for a showdown.
A Chinese intervention could be met with a Taiwan declaration of independence and/or a CIA backed uprising in Tibet.

Could the battles of the mid twentieth century between the Americans and Chinese armies in the frozen mountains along the Korea DMZ explode once again?

Could America already humilated by a resurgent Russian Army in Georgia that threatens future action in its former Eastern European statelite states, tolerate Chinese behaviour in its Pacific sphere of influence without a response?

Watch this space.