North Korea: 2012-2016

[Dayuhan]

The question I answered was why I thought if there was any insurgency it would aim at a restoration of the Kim dynasty or a facsimile thereof. Your response above did not address my answer.

I don't think that would be the aim, but that's looking so far down the line that any comment would be extremely speculative. We have no idea what a hypothetical DPRK collapse would look like or how it would play out. We have no idea how China and the ROK would react: presumably that would be defined by how a collapse happened and how it played out. If a collapse occurred and if it occurred in such a way that somebody was considering sending forces to occupy, repair, stabilize, whatever, I wouldn't want to assume that the foreign force would not face a difficult insurgency problem.

I agree with David M that concerned nations have to be prepared for the possibility of change, possibly sudden and disruptive change, but there are so many unknowns and they are so thoroughly unknown that any such preparation is going to be challenging. The timing and content of whatever happens is likely to be thoroughly unexpected.

I don't assume that if the there was any insurgency it would start with anything or body. For it to succeed it would depend on the support of those poor enslaved people. They are pretty hungry and therefore pretty tired and enough to eat might to do a lot to take the wind out of the sail of any call to fight "them." In any event, if the South Koreans can control food distribution, they can throttle any incipient insurgency. That is why I mentioned Malaya.

Possibly so... but again, I suspect that it would be unwise for an occupying power anywhere to assume that any insurgency they face will be easily throttled.

I don't know what will happen when or if the Kims fall.

Neither does anyone else; welcome to the club. Anyone who claims to know is full of it.

It is easily observed though that the various insurgencies there haven't been able to bring it home. My opinion is that lack of sanctuary is a big part of that. Inept leaders can learn to be ept if they have a place to hide out and think about what they did wrong and what they might do right. That is one advantage of having a sanctuary.

My opinion is that you're assuming a military cause to a primarily political phenomenon. Lack of physical sanctuary has not been a huge constraint for NPA leaders; very few have been killed or captured by the Government. The NPA is largely receding everywhere but Eastern Mindanao, but it's not being defeated by Government, it's essentially dying of natural causes, and I can't see how a physical sanctuary would change that.