The likelyhood of a staged coup in North Korea

Economics Political Theory
1

Sanctions have little effect and do not stem the belligerent behavior (as we know they won’t). A massive show of force is had (two nuclear capable B2 stealth bombers) to no avail.

Dealing with North Korea, Constraints:

The nuclear sites being so close make a ground war very dangerous. We have basically lost there before despite a clever maneuver that managed to get the status quo back.

South Korea, Japan, Russia, China will all be involved immediately.

China facilitates large amounts of north korean trade.

Using strategic nuclear weapons will not be allowed by China or Russia (or UN).

Russia, China, and Japan may use the crisis to make their own land grabs causing greater conflict.

The North Korean army is 1.2 million strong with 200,00 guerillas.

The civilian population is brainwashed.

The civilian population is starving.

Options?

There is no way to fight them that doesn’t turn into a gigantic blunder. Anything posturing that we do the Russians will see as latent posturing aginst them (they will not help the West). China is the only real country that trades with North Korea. Do they want to risk turning dennis the menace loose in Beijing? I think a good ole fashioned 1970’s era CIA coup is the only option. It has to be 1970s style because it will be hard to foment a democratic movement there (internet access is less rpg-oriented in Egypt than in the DPRK). It doesn’t need to be public (often the overconfident establishment types will blab about a “color revolution” and as soon as the target country’s foreign ministry gets ahold of it the jig is up). A good coup is one you don’t know about until twenty years later when the files are declassified.

How could the intelligence agencies of the world pull it off? Are the brass in North Korea also brainwashed? Does North korea have dissident groups that can be prodded and helped? Does the West have any assets in North Korea?

2

Nobody wants to “take over” DPRK. Even if there were a peaceful reunification process with ROK the costs would be staggering, to the point ROK citizens fear a reunification process as much (if not more) as open warfare. Seoul kept a close eye on the German reunification process which, so far, has cost Germans hundreds of billions of euro (and they are still paying for it through two special taxes, one levied on fuel and the other slapped on salaries). And the DDR was in much, much better shape than DPRK: the Soviets deemed it “critically important” and gave it resources usually denied to satellite States like Poland and Bulgaria. The DDR was a poor State but not starvation-level poor as DPRK. After the last two shining examples of “nation building” (not to mention countless billions flushed down the drain in Africa) nobody, not even Uncle Sam, has much appetite for nation building anymore.

As I said before, Beijing holds the key to DPRK. China keeps DPRK alive with aids in cash and nature. The huge and decrepit DPRK military is kept afloat by Chinese handouts of spare parts and fuel. It appears either senescence is catching up with their armed forces or Beijing cut fuel supplies as earlier this year the bulk of the DPRK air force was grounded (satellite intelligence is very rarely wrong and ELINT even less so). There are two factions in China at the moment: those who, due to either ideology or convenience, believe Pyongyang is a useful buffer State and/or ally and those who see these antics as an obstacle to China’s attempt to become a peace broker in the region. China is also investing lots of money in their military, both as an insurance policy against a certain Western nation with a certain penchant for bullying and invading other countries and as yet another industry to feed their continous growth. Except in a very few sectors China is now on par with Russia and some products (like the J10 fighter) are better and more palatable than their Russian counterparts to potential buyers in the region, and not just in the region. China could exploit her new position as peace broker to sell more weapons abroad. And solving the Korean conundrum is very high on the list.

China has the power to force Pyongyang into accepting “reforms” and I personally suspect the latest hissy fit is aimed to Beijing as much as it’s aimed at extorting money from Seoul and Tokyo. Without China’s backing there’s very little DPRK can do apart threatening everybody in sight with their bombastic rhetoric.

Finally another thing to consider: we know very little about Kim Jong-Un. What little we know hints at the fact he is nowhere near as powerful or influential as his father. His succession was much troubled: he’s the junior son of Kim Jong-Il and for years he was second in the line of succession behind his older brother, Kim Jong-Chol. Apparently all their older half-siblings were never considered for succession, though they were given high offices around the country. For reasons unknown Kim Jong-Chol removed himself from succession and is now one of the leaders of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. Very little is known about this young man (he’s 31) apart from the fact foreign diplomats find him very well educated and not given to the Kims’ traditional bouts of hystrionics and staged, well-calculated rage. Kim Jong-Un is a mystery wrapped in an enigma: not even his year of birth is known (1983 or 1984) and apparently he spent some time in Japan as a child (DPRK high officials often go there in vacation while the Japanese government graciously turn the other way). In 2010 he was publicly introduced as an Army general but very little of his background is known. Not even his personality is known: conflicting account give him as either cool-headed and calculating or prone to punch even senior officials who do not treat him with the necessary deference (though this may be part of the aforementioned Kim “private image”).

When Kim Jong-Il died, some analysts predicted Jong-Un could take “extraordinary measures” to consolidate his shaky power base. Thi latest hissy fit may be part of that plan, to show the Army brass he can be as good as his father in the blackmailing business, even when aiming it at China. We shall see if it backfires.

3

what a useless post.

it is extortion not blackmail.

All of that and then you end on the same question i am asking…is there room for a coup? The kid can only have respect if the brass is brainwashed. You say no one wants to take over the DRPK, but that is dubious. i bet there is well concealed envy all over in the military there. This would all already be ended if Nixon and Kissinger were still running things.

4

As long as the embargo exists against North Korea the ruling party can always blame the USA and its puppet South Korea for the ills in North Korea. Remove the embargo and you remove this blame. Remove the embargo and entrepreneurs will eventually gain a foothold in the country. The list of formerly totalitarian countries that now are almost as “economically” free as the USA is getting long. I can think of these mostly Eastern governments: China, Tiawan, South Korea, Vietnam (Less So), Cambodia and the second most economically free place on Earth with a very authoritarian govenrment: Singapore.

And the same concept goes double for Cuba although USA tobacco, sugar and citrus interests play a large part in the embargo against those poor people.

5

And the same concept goes double for Cuba although USA tobacco, sugar and citrus interests play a large part in the embargo against those poor people.

Wouldn’t more companies benefit from trade with Cuba than be hurt by it?

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you really think the level of brainwashing that occurs in N Korea is appropriate to trade with them. you think it is okay to grow their power? None of the countries you mention are anywhere close to N Korea.

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Sure, most people residing in the USA would benefit from open trade with Cuba, the small group of people in the military-intelligence-security business and those in the tobacco, citrus and sugar businesses would be hurt with by the competition.

8

The first North Korean dude to drive down the street with a SUV full of people having fun all texting on their cell phones will instantly destroy even the best brainwashing. And wait until comercials show up on bill boards and like about buying cell phones and bikinis, that will completely topple the existing social structure.

Besides, the USA and its ilk fear the huge supply of very inexpensive and somewhat well educated labor available in these countries most of all.

9

I hate it when libertarians rant about trade liberalization as the means to solve all political woes. Practically, it is not. Read a book on the subject; there are a lot.

@Bogart

have you any experience with brainwashing? three genereations of it aren’t destroyed by commericals and ads.

Sometimes I wonder if you people realize that China and South Korea’s most educated end up in the USA for college…we’re better at ‘fooling’ the world into our superiority than people here give the US credit for.

More conjecture. the embargo exists so that the S Koreans can feel secure that there isn’t a ruling family in North Korea getting richer due to foreign trade that can get and use nuclear weapons. It is one of the main criticisms on NOT to give foreign aid to enemies and warlords - they will take it and keep it. Lifting an embargo on a state that will take every cent of profit on their end is idiotic. The people won’t get shit. And if one ad or billboard would be so effective, why are there not rebellions? Because the military there is powerful and brainwashed..…

Your posts are nothing but your own underdeveloped conjectures. useless hypothetical one’s that are good only in abstraction at that. Learn the semantics for anthropoligical/empirical politics not ‘the Clayton method’ of world poltics (building guesses onto more guesses without ever bothering to verify if any of them were trrue). the first post was better.

yes. Cuba has been on the receiving end of CIA economic warfare for 50 years. 9 of every 10 foreign trade arrangements they have made have been pressured out of existence by the US.

This post was more for people who know something about geopolitics…

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Damn. You told (said to) us. Please substantiate.

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Oh please, Jargon. Substantiantion is for lesser mortals such as Bogart.

12

The list of formerly totalitarian countries that now are almost as “economically” free as the USA is getting long. I can think of these mostly Eastern governments: China

China. China is now almost as economically free as the US.

Let’s let what you said sink in a little bit.

…

Do you feel worse about it now? You should.

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RE: Bogart’s comment on chinese schools it; it doesn’t appear that the labor is all that educated: skilled, yes, surely, but not educated.

Chinese students enroll in record numbers at U.S. colleges

Chinese flock to elite U.S. schools

The Risks of China’s Students

Behind the Boom in Chinese Students at U.S. Colleges **

Study in America: Top 5 countries sending students to US

You speak of embargo like the relationship is only on the US-end. The DRPK makes laws too and it their laws that prevent capital from moving in. There are other countries in the world, you know, and not all of them value trade relationships equally.

Exactly! It is not as if the people there have never seen Western culture. It is not that they do not know that, at least some of them, they are living a shitty life, simply due to their lack of food. but, I bet that there aren’t many of them that will step too far out of line, let alone on a regular basis, with the presence of their military.

The first claim that no one wants to take over the machinery of a highly effective domestic military apparatus is absurd. When in history can we point to where there has been a people who conclude, “eegh, no one wants to run the state”?

Now, the envy in the Naegak that i mentioned before, would be the most likely candidates for a potential takeover. The people themselves are too scared of the military to attempt a large revolution and if they did it would mean the murder of many of them. The most articulate and adapted minds of the DRPK brass might know in their minds that Kim Jong Un is a punk kid that has everyone thinking he is a god. The alternative is that the brass is also brainwashed to the level where they believe the things that they themselves craft into propaganda for their masses. This notion could be a serious concern because it means that everything in the world of theory and history is out the window. If they believe the things in their own propaganda, like people in the US media do, then I would not even know where to start looking for a metric to attempt to judge their judgments. however, traditional intelligence in the west seems to think that their military brass is well educated and well paid which says to me that they likely are harboring envy for this kid at some level. They read the news.

Another alternative is that the cabinet/military, particularly the high ups, must be aware of western culture, but their perception of it is damaged due to the brainwashing. That level of brainwashing will not erode overnight. it will be a much worse form of the 50 year prisoner getting out of jail (in light of a coup). Another thought that you must include here is that if the brass ‘knows’ the jig and have not staged a coup yet, then we have to still include the inference that they like the power and money that they have.

Now, China knows that if the DRPK were to topple, a thought that everyone has had for 50 years, the assimilation into the world will be responsibility of China and/or South Korea, I bet not together. Look at palestine; look at turkey, iran, iraq, and the kurds. Poor refugees are something only the US takes in and even the US doesn’t take in the aforementioned groups.

North Korea’s main tactic since the end of the Cold War has been to extort economic benefits from the rich westernized nations right next door. but they know that markets work and have small zones where farmers are allowed to act a little less restrained. the political control is the only thing that keeps the nation together because there is nothing else to do it.

China uses DRPK as a buffer against SK, Japan, and the US. They will likely not support unification. China still denies that it has anything to do with the DRPK’s actions, even though they are the only significant trade partner and they suffer the brunt of the other nation’s actions as they retaliate, Japan speeding up its military production, the US missile defense (China and Russia think this is aimed at them). Any fissile material etc. will be being given to them by China. i wonder if the Chinese would not themselves take NK…

The Chinese could surely stage coup then install someone they like since, I’m sure, that the Chinese don’t want to be border states with a western security agreement state. In fact, if they were to install their own leader it would be a sign that they are a growing hegemonic power. The U.S. did that sort of thing all over South America.

It is almost too bad that the Chinese don’t have a foreign intelligence apparatus like the US.