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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Talk of N. Korean Collapse Rekindled by Currency Reform Fallout |
| 2010-05-02 |
| For the first time in years, international experts say North Korea's isolated government is increasingly frail, and potentially unstable. Part of the reason, they say, is Pyongyang's attempt at currency reform last year. Flash back to North Korea, early 1995. The Soviet Union and its eastern bloc allies were gone, along with the economic aid that flowed from them. Kim Il-sung, the leader North Koreans worship like a god, had died the year before. And the country was entering a severe famine that would kill an estimated million people. Predictions abounded that North Korea would collapse. But it persevered, and by 2005 predictions of a North Korean collapse were dismissed and even ridiculed. Now, however, in 2010, that is changing, as Mansfield Foundation Executive Director Gordon Flake said recently. "I think there's some increasing views in Seoul that after 20 years of wrongly predicting the demise of North Korea, there's something going on in Pyongyang," said Gordon Flake. "There are a growing number of people in South Korea who say that we're getting close to the end game here." |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 Been SAYING that for 40/50 years now. Is this like the prediction of world's end, just keep on predicting and one day you'll be right? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2010-05-02 12:27 |