I'm 30, and I don't expect an uprising Tunisia style. The people are probably too brainwashed, scared and/or hungry to start jumping on tanks and all that. I think it'll be more of a long term degeneration of the country that'll kill off the 'Stalinist monarchy'. You know, the guns and tanks will get rusty, the army will not get paid or fed, electricity will cease for months on end, and then the top brass will start squabbling amongst themselves...... And if the Commies do die out, then one hell of a lot of work needs to be done to adjust the North before Korea can be reunited. And China will probably have to fork out some serious cash too to stop this flood of refugees coming over (though that argument does not wash with me).
A thought I have on this is that change in North Korea will come from China. I can China slowly involving themselves in North Korea to a point where they start building up some infrastructure, electrical grid, etc...why I think this is simple. China shares a border with NK and if NK were to suddenly collapse it will be China who will see many of the refugees. Also NK is a good little satellite for China so any improvements there will have benefits for China as well.
Does anybody happen to know how easy it is if you are North Korean and somehow make it out of NK to get a South Korean passport? Because one factor of the fast German reunification as that the West would just give citizenship to every East German who somehow made it out (which explains how the GDR crashed so fast after Hungary and Czechoslowakia opened their borders).
same thing in Korea, the South gives it automatically. the South Koreans also have the same arrogant attitude towards their Northern cousins as the West Germans used to have towards East Germans. haven't lived in Germany for a long time, so I just assume it got better by now.
I think the military leaders will probably become the real rulers, and fat Kim will merely be the token 'Great Leader' making an appearance every few years, offering bonkers advice and orders to bemused tramps pretending to work in some derelict farm or factory in return for a few turnips and a shoe. Have there been attempts to smuggle forbidden literature and typewriters like the CIA did in places like Poland? I can imagine George Orwell being very subversive and corrosive to the ruling class.
