The Kim Chong Il Regime in North Korea is on the verge of collapse and the end of Kim Chong Il should lead to a contingency situation in North Korea. There are several reasons why we can assume Kim’’s regime is coming to an end. Kim Chong Il is 69 years old and his health is very doubtful whether he can wield a strong fist to continue to govern the North Korean garrison state. Another reason is the utterly failed socialist economy of North Korea. They are unable to feed even their militaries without the aid from the outside world. Finally, the international community is scolding North Korea’’s wrong doings such as the proliferation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD), supporting terrorists groups, and waging military campaigning against South Korea as we saw in 2010. The sanctions of EU, the Unites States, Japan and other democratic countries against North Korea is now being focused to the Kim Chong Il regime rather than towards North Korea and its people.
 

Kim Chong Il is trying to evade these hardships through the successful power transition to his younger son Kim Jung Un who is now 27 years old. Kim Jung Un was anointed as heir of Kim Chong Il and also appointed as a four star general of the North Korean Armed Forces on September 27, 2010. However, most of the North Korean specialists do not believe that the Kim Jung Un has the power and capability to lead North Korea after Kim Chong Il is gone. It is very ceratin that North Korea will be in a chaotic and lawless situation after the end of the Kim Chong Il regime; this means instability not only in the Korean peninsula, but also in the Northeast Asian international system where the national interests of the four great powers intersect.

In this regard, the Republic of Korea as well as other concerned states should be prepared for the contingency in North Korea. However, the ROK government for the past ten years did not want to assume the breakdown of the North Korean regime and thus were not willing to make a fine plan to deal with the situation. To deal with North Korea’s contingency effectively, ROK should have a well prepared economic as well as political, diplomatic and military plans to deal with the North Korean contingency. This report is prepared for these purposes described above.

The authors of this report have agreed that the Contingency in North Korea should be the momentum for all Korean people to achieve national unification with a free and democratic political economic system. In this respect, this report is different from many others which usually focuses upon just how to manage the North Korean contingency in orderly ways.

This report tries to explain why there will be contingency in North Korea and also describe how it will look like. The authors emphasize that the contingency in North Korea may provoke violent confrontations among military groups and civilians, and these violences should be contained in the North Korean territory. For this, ROK should have not only a well prepared plan but also have enough resources to deal with such a situation.

Because the contingency in North Korea will impact the international society, it is imperative for the ROK to seek and maintain international cooperations from the United States, China, Japan and Russia. The national interests of the United States and China concerning the contingency of North Korea may differ from each other or even be the opposite. The confrontations between the United States and China on North Korea is also a very difficult problem to be peacefully solved in the contingency situation of North Korea.

This report is a pilot study for a subject that has not yet happened. Therefore, many of the arguments present in this report are hypothetical even though they are fully based upon educated guesses. However, this report is plausible because there already are many thought provoking studies on this same subject. The experiences of Germany were extremely helpful for the authors in preparing this report.

The end of the Kim Chong Il regime may come like a landslide and we should be prepared for the contingency in North Korea; this report should be of guideline for such preparation. This report should be refined and sophisticated further.