Abstract
Regime change is not an immediate answer to the current challenges posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK). But North Korea’s bellicose actions and statements since late 2012 reinforce the conclusion that, in the long run, there is only one happy ending to this long-running tragedy: unification of the Korean Peninsula as a democratic, free-enterprise-based republic that would be free of nuclear weapons.
As a policy tool for dealing with troublesome governments, regime change has a chequered past. The carnage and turmoil stemming from the Iraq invasion and ensuing loss of American power and prestige remain a fresh lesson in the hubris of external action to replace a hostile authority. Washington’s enunciation that regime change was the goal of sanctions on Saddam Hussein led him to stop cooperating with UN inspections. In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, however much one may wish for a Green Movement-type transformation of the leadership in Tehran, positing this as a US policy goal would only spur Iran’s move toward nuclear armament. Suspicions that regime change is the goal behind US-led sanctions already make Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disinclined to compromise, or even talk, with the United States. Moreover, there is no reason to think that any other set of Iranian leaders would forego the nuclear programmes of concern.
The case of North Korea, however, is sui generis. For three generations, the DPRK has been the single greatest source of tension and instability in Northeast Asia. Its 2010 torpedoing of a South Korean naval vessel and shelling of an inhabited island were but the latest in a long history of lethal provocations. No country is more brutal to its own people or has a longer rap sheet of violations of international norms and conventions. Kidnapping, drug running, trafficking in endangered species and counterfeiting foreign currencies, pharmaceuticals and cigarettes are among the many welldocumented and oft-repeated cases of state criminality. Until recently, such activity by what has been called the ‘Sopranos state’ might have been dismissed as petty crime, the provocations counted as one-off disturbances and the human-rights abuses judged to be an internal matter. Yet North Korea now has the means and expressed intent, via missiles and nuclear weapons, to inflict an unacceptable level of damage on its neighbours. It is time to advocate the endgame for the Kim-family regime.
What makes North Korea unique as a case for regime change is that it is known, with reasonable certainty, what will replace the DPRK. Undoubtedly, the fall of the house of Kim will entail a dangerous transition period. But, eventually – and probably sooner rather than later – the Korean Peninsula would be unified under the leadership of the Republic of Korea (ROK). The ROK government has indicated that, when this happens, it will remain free of nuclear weapons.
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