North Korean Unicorns Discovered

Merge complete!

Sadly, it's a photoshop, but the original isn't that much better.

There's a lot of moving objects at work here.

North Korea: the government is still very much a mystery. Ostensibly, Kim Jong Un is in charge. Kim Jong Un is also in his late 20s and with little actual experience so the thought of his being the undisputed dictator of a Marxist theocracy is ...kind of funny. He is almost certainly a figurehead, and as part of that he has a strong physical resemblance to worshipped-as-a-god Kim Il Sung and can actually give a speech, unlike his father. Although it's theoretically possible that Kim Jong Un actually has real power simply by virtue of being the dictator in name, most people believe real power is in the hands of Kim Kyong Hui (Kim Jong Il's sister) and her husband Jang Sang Taek. The Daily NK is running an interesting story on Jang Sang Taek's rise to power here: http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk03600&num=10291 Essentially, given such instability and most likely a lot of posturing behind the scenes, North Korea is very much likely to continue to bluff and posture.

South Korea: just had a change in government. As both the outgoing and incoming governments are of the same party there isn't a lot of expected policy change, though it's likely North Korea chose now as the time to rattle its nuclear saber due to South Korea's leadership transition - the theory being if it happened during the outgoing Lee Myung-Bak administration the incoming Park Gyung-Hee's administration would ignore it easier. This merely goes to show how badly North Korea is at reading South Korean politics, to put it mildly.

China: *also* just had a change in government (see a pattern?) but this one is far more critical for the region. The new leader, Xi Jinping, is believed to be more nationalist than the previous leader, Hu Jintao, and China has been rattling its sabres against Japan in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute. Interestingly, Xi has also made public statements in support of China not being an enemy of the US, most likely to try to engage the US and have it at least be neutral in its border disputes. North Korea is an easy concession in such an environment, and in any event China has long been unhappy with North Korea's *peculiar* system of government and its constant resource drain. However, there is also a group of Chinese officials who believe in unconditional support of North Korea as a wedge against the US. The real issue, though, is that North Korea is now effectively an economic dependency of China, and were China to cut off its support in any meaningful way North Korea would collapse immediately. A North Korean collapse is in the interest of no one (save the North Korean people whom few actually care about on any side) so China's opprobrium would most likely be contained to the rhetorical. A typical threat can be seen in Global Times, a populist Chinese newspaper with links to Xi Jinping's faction, here: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/760434.shtml The key quote from this:

The significance of this signal (and that is precisely what it is) cannot be overstated.

China has a very primal fear of "luan", or political strife/chaos. During the Cultural Revolution Mao specifically encouraged the "masses" to rise up and go apeshit as a political pressure tactic, and the resulting massive disorder profoundly affected everyone who lived through it - and that generation comprises the current leaders of China. This is why, when the rest of the Communist world collapsed, China brought out the bayonets and bathed Tienanmen Square in blood - massacring protesters in the center of the Chinese universe was considered preferable to the protest movement catching fire nationally. A good portion of domestic political policy is based on an, again, very primal desire to avoid a reoccurrence of luan. Many Chinese leaders will say, very forthrightly, that democracy isn't an option for China because the people can't be trusted, and for them they have experience of the 1960s and 1970s where when the people had political power, they used it to, well, fuck shit up. Hu Jintao, whose father was purged during the Cultural Revolution, had as his guiding ideology a "Harmonious Society" where everyone is just cool, OK? Be cool, right? It's ok if you get ridiculously rich, or really say whatever you want in private, just be cool. No luan.

Fear of luan can be overstated (like any other theory for explaining a complex and opaque society) but it explains why China has a knee-jerk reaction to the potential of disorder in North Korea. North Korea is on the border of Manchuria, and many ethnic Koreans live in China near the border as well. A North Korean collapse would result in millions of people flooding into China. It would result in luan. Therefore it must be stopped. It's pretty much exactly that simple.

As for other players in the drama: South Korea would prefer North Korea gradually "grow up" to South Korean standards, because the alternative would involve injecting millions of literally starving Koreans into the until-that-point-booming South Korean economy. In the meantime South Korea is quite happy to outsource to North Korea as cheap and compliant-at-gunpoint labor. Most other countries (Japan, Russia, the US) don't care enough to really diverge too much from China and South Korea's view.

"So... as one superhuman deity to another... how WAS Madonna?"

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Maybe I'll run into the Gangnam Style dude while I'm here @psy_oppa #WORMinNorthKorea

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