The death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il – announced by state television in Pyongyang Monday — marks the end of a ruthless and brutal rein of terror, but the future of the infamously isolationist nation remains uncertain, experts told the Herald.
“A bastard – he really was,” said Brandeis University international relations professor Robert Art. “A guy that was willing to immiserate his people for his own ends and let thousands upon thousands of people starve.”
“Truly evil,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “A really nasty piece of work.”
Kim Jong Il, who was 69, last year announced his son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un would be his successor – but a potentially catastrophic power struggle with implications for the United States may lie ahead, Pike said.
“North Korea will implode,” said Pike. “His son is too young to assume effective control and there’s no plan B. … The year 2012 will be very interesting. … We’re going to have to understand how to help manage it without confronting red Chinese troops at the Yalu River.”
Art said the best course for the US is to remain cautious, noting no one really knows what the North Koreans have planned.
“Usually in power struggles, regimes lay low for a while But this regime has been so unpredictable,” said Art. “They could just as easily manufacture a crisis to unite the country.”
Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, Kim Il Sung died in 1994, but was groomed for 20 years to lead. Kim reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008 but had appeared in good health recently. He was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.
North Korean propaganda, couched in flowery pseudo-legendary rhetoric, has it that Kim was born on the cherished site of Mount Paekdu amid rainbows and a brilliant new star. Soviet records, however, indicate he was born in Siberia.
