You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
China-Japan-Koreas
Let North Korea Collapse
2014-06-19
Writer Sue Mi Terry, a former C.I.A. analyst, is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asia Institute. This op-ed is adapted from an essay in the July/August 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs.
Interesting piece: let North Korea collapse runs counter to all the "conventional wisdom" which is that we have to prop up the Norks so as not to have a horrible death rattle from the regime followed by a terrible refugee problem. Ms. Terry wants to rip off the bandage all at once. Intriguing idea that we at the Burg have discussed, with some approval, in the past.
Posted by:Steve White

#5  Zhang do the think the labor shortage is happening faster than forecast?
Posted by: Shipman   2014-06-19 16:40  

#4  China will also be the ones dealing with whatever refugee crisis.

The ballyhooed refugee crisis is a crock of shit. China has a labor shortage. In part, this is how Chinese wages have crept from being just about dead last back in 1979, when it turned towards capitalism, to the top half of the pack today. China could easily absorb all 25m North Koreans in a heartbeat. If they are prepared to work, they'll eat. If they're not, China's crematoria and/or landfills are prepared to process all the famine dead. Famine deaths won't be a problem once refugees cross the border. North Korea's problem has nothing to do with a lack of work ethic. The Kim regime has diverted all of NK's economic surplus via cockamamie economic schemes and outright confiscation for both royalty and the Communist aristocrats who serve them.

In the long term, China probably sees North Korea as a vassal state to be absorbed like many of its other vassal states. That can't happen as long as the US is in South Korea. China can defeat North Korea and it can defeat South Korea. What it can't do is defeat the US. That is why, from a Chinese standpoint, North Korea needs to remain standing, until the US leaves the Korean peninsula. Because its collapse today would give South Korea an additional 25m citizens and hundreds of miles of additional strategic depth.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2014-06-19 10:07  

#3  The US, RoK and Japan also give the rabid dog hundreds of tons of rice annually, Ed.
Posted by: Skidmark   2014-06-19 10:01  

#2  Let's see... China saved them by intervening during the war; China supports them for 50 years by maintaining their outside access channel; China seems to be the one holding the leash, or at least, they're the ones who yank it when things get out of hand. China will also be the ones dealing with whatever refugee crisis.
I'd say it's China's problem, let them spend their money deal with the ramifications.
Posted by: ed in texas   2014-06-19 07:36  

#1  They fear that its demise would be too destabilizing and that the peninsulaÂ’s reunification would mean crippling economic and social costs for South Korea. But this is a blinkered view, because the long-term benefits of North KoreaÂ’s collapse, both strategic and economic, far outweigh the short-term costs.

Only one of several nations for which we appear to suffer a "blinkered view." Not difficult at all to see why Ms. Terry is a... 'former' CIA analyst.
Posted by: Besoeker   2014-06-19 04:56  

00:00