Why are NK doomsday scenarios hard to kill?

Analysts overall agree that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is physically fitter, the succession process is relatively stable, and the country is unlikely to face any imminent tumble. That’s quite a different diagnosis from a few months ago.

News reports from early this year described North Korea as being on the verge of collapse. Amid widening civil protests in northern Africa and the Middle East, a major conservative-leaning newspaper in South Korea said, “The riots are expanding even into North Korea. Hundreds of protesters have clashed with the authorities.”

The newspaper’s website posted a North Korea map with large red circles around multiple cities to mark “riot zones,” adding more drama to the report. It said the military was deployed to quell the demonstration, leaving some protesters wounded, characterizing the protest as “an eruption of long pent-up discontent.”

Even soldiers were reportedly leaving their barracks en masse without authorization, in search of food. The North’s military is one of the best fed groups under the leadership’s special care to garner its loyalty. The state also practices a “military-first policy.”

Therefore, the news of soldiers leaving barracks was seen as an emerging manifestation of the dissipation of control in the regime, which was undergoing a precarious leadership transition to Kim’s third and youngest son, Jong-un, who is still in his 20s. All this while Kim’s own health remained fragile after a stroke, and the country’s economy lay in tatters.

Even President Lee Myung-bak joined the sentiment. In December, Lee cryptically predicted twice: “Unification is drawing near.”

Yet the mood has undergone a sea change recently. The infectious news, which spread from one news outlet to another, about the “imminent collapse” of North Korea, disappeared just like a flu virus completed its life cycle and vanished. In fact, history shows a repeated outbreak of predictions on North Korea’s collapse, which has yet to materialize.

“I have observed over the last 20 years, repeated predictions occasionally from South Korea but much more from the United States, of the impending doom of North Korea,” said Jonathan Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

“By my counting, there were four cycles of this. It gets under our skin. We think North Korea can’t go on this way. We think there’s got to be something happening now in North Korea. It’s going to collapse. But it never happens,” Pollack told a small group of journalists Thursday in Beijing.

In fact, predicting the final hours of North Korea has proven to be among the most challenging intellectual guesswork among experts. This is partly because North Korea has had the appearance of being on its deathbed for years. Besides, some of the remaining authoritarian countries around the world, similar to North Korea, also recently saw a civil uprising, called the “Jasmine Revolution,” which overthrew the regime.

“You could argue that the end of this kind of regime can come very abruptly, almost without notice. And there is some truth to that. But I believe North Korea is a remarkably a resilient place,” Pollack said.

Analysts view that in the absence of outside intervention, there are only two scenarios in which Pyongyang can collapse internally.

Firstly, there are civil protests at the national level. Secondly, there is a crack within the core leadership. They view that North Korea’s extreme isolation, six decades of thought control, almost non-existent Internet communication, and severe punishments for dissidents, all make it impossible for the North to have a Jasmine Revolution.

There are no noticeable signs of a split in the core leadership in North Korea either. On the contrary, there are reports of a stable leadership transition to Jong-un. Initially, there was a view that given his young age, he would be manipulated by powerful insiders, for example, Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law. But Jang was recently admonished by his wife, Kim Kyong-hui, for calling Jong-un by his first-name, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said last week, citing a government official. Analysts believe that the episode illustrates Jong-un’s firm status as crown prince.

“I think when we look at North Korea, we should begin with the realities on the ground and the circumstances we confront,” Pollack said.

Pollack also sticks to his own statement, by refusing to be drawn into guessing the future of North Korea. “Can the regime sustain itself? Well, that’s one of the unanswered questions,” he paused. “At least, thus far, they’ve managed to do so.”

Pollack also cautioned against projecting one’s wishful thinking into the task of analyzing North Korea. “We cannot and should not base any kind of strategy vis-a-vis North Korea on the expectation that they are going to go gentle into that good night. Itjust not the way the place is set up. And the North Korean leadership is also trying very hard to prevent that from happening.