A North Korean Collapse .... Should We be Worried?

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Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, Deadly Arsenals (2005)

The World Shouldn't Fear The Collapse of North Korea
-- Wall Street Journal

As panicky U.S. negotiators raced this week to save the endangered Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, they faced a major new issue: Who would be calling the shots in Pyongyang when the breathless American diplomats arrived? Kim Jong Il's absence from the North's recent 60th-birthday celebration unleashed a world-wide torrent of speculation and rumors about his failing health.

In both Washington and Pyongyang, voices have been raised essentially arguing that a regime crisis is the last thing we should want. But is the stability of an internationally criminal, cruelly dictatorial, nuclear-weapons-equipped North Korea really something we should value above all conceivable alternatives?

Nightmare predictions of loose nukes, an out-of-control North Korean military, a tsunami of refugees and the prospect that the South might have to absorb over 20 million impoverished new citizens are keeping some awake at night. Unquestionably, a Pyongyang regime crisis carries huge risks and challenges. But let's keep our eyes on the prize. There may be a precious opportunity in the midst of potential disaster to reunite the Korean Peninsula under democratic rule, or at least bring this objective closer.

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My Comment: I disagree. We should be concerned. I am sure that South Korea, Japan, China, and the U.S. have some vague contingency plans for a Romanian style revolution or collapse in North Korea. But when North Korea comes apart as a failed state .... and one day it will .... I can only hope that the turmoil and killing will be isolated within the country itself.