NightWatch on north Korea

Mr. McCreary in his NightWatch below assesses the stability of the Kim Family Regime.  He says that the current crackdown on dissidents is the most severe in 20 years.  We should re-familiarize ourselves with Bob Collins' 7 Phases of Collapse or Patterns of Collapse.  We have seen north Korea in Phase 4 – "Suppression" for many years.   Mr. McCreary is alluding to potential for resistance which would be Phase 5. I think we should keep in mind some of the indicators of Phase 5 and now that once we are in that phase things could move very fast through Phase 6 (Fracture) and Phase 7 (Realignment).  But we should be observing for these conditions and indicators in Phase 5 (and we should keep in mind when faced with Fracture, Phase 6, the decision could be made to go to war) and always be asking in addition to planning what preparations can and should we be making to deal with this situation?

e. Phase Five: Resistance - This phase presupposes that the supression phase failed to meet its intended goals.  Local groups, even new sub-systems evolving out of independent activity, will gain confidence in their ability not to succumb to the government’s suppression attempts either through open resistance or manipulation of reporting that forwards false data.

                        1/  Refusal to obey government directives.  These directives will be ignored because those that resist perceive enforcement is unlikely.

                        2/ Usurpation of government assets, such as storehouses or competing sub-systems.  This will enhance the power of local resistance activities, whether economically or politically based.

                        3/ Threats and violence employed against internal security representatives to either win their culpability or simple elimination.  Resistance groups will lose their fear of internal security forces and either eliminate them, beginning at the basic level, or incorporate them into their local sub-system to assist in their activity.

                        4/ The more successful local resistance becomes, the more likely a resource-denied sub-system (which is already a paramilitary unit within the nKorean social system) will begin to employ counter-force against the regime’s mobilized military units.  Such an incident will become a central issue dominating the attention of the Core Group.

                        5/ Successful armed resistance, though only at the sub-system level (company to battalion-sizedparamilitary level) will lead the regime’s Core Group to employ combined arms operations against the resistance group.  Some military leaders receiving such orders will hesitate to employ maximum indiscriminate force against local citizens and will immediately berelieved if not executed on the spot.  Other leaders will execute the executioner.  The depth of the resistance phase can be measured by the rank of the officer who does not obey orders from Pyongyang.

                        6/ Low echelon border units, along both the northern border and the DMZ, will cross the border and the MDL while senior echelons are preoccupied with resistance suppression.   Platoon commanders will be capable of initiating a platoon level crossing of the border or DMZ for the purpose ofavoiding punishment, chaos, or worse.  After eliminating the company’s single political officer, a company commander would be capable of taking a whole company across the DMZ.  The senior battalion commander would be forced to call for artillery fires into the DMZ or beyond to halt the platoon or company-sized defections across the DMZ.  He would do this knowing that he would probably be immediately executed for permitting it to happen in the first place.  This process would not likely end until the division or corps level.

Let me clarify one thing about Bob's 7 Phases of Collapse for those who do not follow north Korea. Bob's work was based on a scholarly analysis of failed states and how regimes collapse throughout history up through the 1990's when he completed his research.  He then applied this to the unique conditions of north Korea and developed a framework for how to look at the possibility of north Korean regime collapse and what process it might follow.  I know everyone wants to know if and when north Korea will collapse; however, Bob's work has never made any such predictions.  It is only about what to look for to try to identify indicators of collapse and again to provide a framework for how to view the process and understand what is happening.  I can say with certainly that there has been no work done in the academic or intelligence communities to match this analysis.  If there is anything comparable, I have not come across it in the last 20 years.  But the bottom line is that his work is not predictive but I think it provides the most realistic look at what might happen as the regime becomes threatened by its own internal contradictions. But I will continue to try to beat the drum we (we as in the ROK-US Alliance) had better ensure that we are prepared to deal with collapse as well as war and a combination of the two - if none of this occurs and there is peaceful Unification or the north radically changes its behavior and becomes a responsible member of the international community I will gladly accept the moniker of Chicken Little.

For those who are interested in reading some more on this, here is the link to Robert Kaplan's 2006 Atlantic article "When North Korea Falls" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/10/when-north-korea-falls/305228/

V/R
Dave

NightWatch 20121127

NightWatch

For the night of 27 November 2012

North Korea: Leader Kim Jong-un is cracking down on anti-government activities, according to a report published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). In his name, security authorities received orders for a mass flushing out of "dissidents."

The regime convened a large-scale meeting on Friday, 23 November, in Pyongyang attended by leaders of local police offices to discuss how to hunt down any people threatening national security.

Kim sent a message to the meeting that read, "We must find all of the notorious dissidents, who are hiding a knife behind their backs and waiting for the right timing to trigger a riot, and flatten all of them mercilessly," KCNA reported.

Kim ordered enhanced security near giant statues of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Chong-il astride horses. Kim Jong-un told the heads of his internal security agencies to find and eliminate rebellious people.

He also convened a meeting of judges and prosecutors in Pyongyang on Monday, KCNAreported. Kim sent them a letter, delivered by his secretary, entitled, "How to improve the judiciary and the prosecution."

"Through improving the judiciary and the prosecution, we can eradicate all crimes and illegal acts and stand the revolutionary order upright in order to push forward with a strong, prosperous nation," Kim said. "They should strictly deal with anti-state criminals who have bad backgrounds but don't show it outwardly."

During visits to the Ministry of State Security in October and in November, Kim directed that the ministry "should protect people from enemy strategies and mercilessly crack down on traitors who have wrong dreams without hesitation."

Comment: Despite executions of military officers appointed by his father and the continuing purge of officials suspected of disloyalty, Kim Jong-un's regime is not stable. This is the most extensive crackdown in at least 20 years and is an admission that the leadership transition is not complete or accepted.

As for defacing statues and pictures of the leaders, that is a time-honored North Korean tradition, despite severe punishments for those who get caught. North Koreans draw mustaches on the pictures. A long range missile launch or space launch would be a useful diversion from the internal upheaval Kim has instigated.

Those who hoped that a Swiss-educated North Korean leader would be any less Korean must be disappointed. What began as a purge of top leaders suspected of disloyalty to Kim now is being extended to the population at large.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_12000221.aspx