North Korean Family Ties and Korean Reunion

The holiday season is a time when families get together and rejoice. Reflecting on family reunions and ties as one does this time of year I can’t help but reflect on the ultimate hereditary political family – the Kims in North Korea. The Great Leaders Kim. Kim Il Sung, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, and now the Great Successor Kim Jong Un. This kid, all of 28, inherited the office and title because of the gene pool he was born into. Thankfully, he was being mentored by his uncle, 66-year-old Jang Song Thaek, a hard-drinking, accordion-playing ’60s rock ‘n’ roller who probably recommended Kim the Younger’s hip new hairdo. Jang has donned the uniform of a general in the North’s powerful military and was clearly pulling major strings as the Hermit Kingdom sets out on the latest chapter in its odd history – until he was executed with a family tie around his neck.

The untested Brilliant Leader and his deceased uncle know the regime is unsustainable. It is just a question of time before the Hermit Kingdom either implodes or reunifies with the South peacefully. It is up to We the Apathetic Maids to make sure that if it implodes, it is a controlled implosion – one that is controlled by the five-party talks that I have recommended in earlier books. It has to be a well-managed crash landing. Kim Jong Un should study the U.K. House of Windsor model for reunification and dynastic survival. He could become Korea’s George Washington and China’s Deng Xiaoping all wrapped into one. It is up to China to prod him to do so with U.S. support.

Kim Jong Il’s fatal heart attack is just another metaphor for how North Korea will succumb. The country has reached a dead end.

A reformist group within the existing power structure, initially led by uncle Jang, might just be able to use the regime’s extreme nationalism in a different and more positive way – just as Nixon and his inside circle brought an end to the Vietnam War.

As long as China can’t trust U.S. containment motives, tolerating and supporting North Korea’s unpredictable nuclear-powered regime is well worth the aggravation and heartburn. The young Kim’s flood-ravaged and poverty-ridden country would be in even more dire straits and the Kim dynasty would collapse, and probably will anyway, were it not for China’s ongoing economic support ─ and for good reason. Unpredictable North Korea remains a useful buffer to the American military presence in South Korea and a convenient loose nuclear cannon. After all, a reunified Korea could let America base troops right in China’s backyard. Better yet, the Kims have kept Japan off balance, focused on an unstable nuclear neighbor with scores to settle. Pyongyang’s harsh anti-Japanese rhetoric has most Japanese convinced that North Korea, not China, is their No. 1 military threat.

The amount of press attributing North Korea’s 2011 aggression to the leadership change from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un and the ongoing rift between the military and other more conciliatory factions has few supporting facts. Granted, Un could be overthrown by older relatives or military commanders, as his ’60s rebel rock ‘n’ roller uncle, who himself survived politically against all odds, tried and paid the ultimate price — but it is highly unlikely.

But that does not justify America or China’s acceptance of Pyongyang’s aggressive military behavior. The “smooth and stable” succession story line appears to be another example of stale U.S. State Department rehashed sound bites. Groundless Korean political theory and analysis. It’s no different than the poor U.S. sound bites of former Soviet political in-fighting preceding the collapse of the Stalinist state.

The ongoing wait-and-see policy adopted by the U.S. and South Korea is also a nonstarter. How long does the world have to wait-and-see while America negotiates and sells more weapons systems to Japan and South Korea? Former Defense Secretary William Perry had the right approach when he proposed that the U.S. should deal with a real North Korea, not a North Korea based on America’s wishful thinking.

America, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia must prepare themselves for the collapse of the North Korean regime and how to handle its more than 24 million undereducated, malnourished and traumatized people who will have to be absorbed by a modern South Korea and China. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in December 2010 added to the concerns, saying: “I feel that reunification is drawing near.”

The Hong Kong model of “one country, two systems” is the most practical reunification solution for the Korean peninsula. Such a model for a decade or two would keep a buffer state between the U.S. ally in South Korea and China, while still giving Beijing control to modernize the North with economic support from America, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

The U.S. and China should go ahead with five-party talks ─ cutting out North Korea ─ under the plan I proposed in my books Custom Maid Knowledge and Feasting Dragon, Starving Eagle. A plan to constructively remove the despotic Kim regime permanently ─ a la Haiti and Philippines style – or England’s Windsors, a hereditary family with binding ties.