Mick Hartley

It'll collapse at some point, that's for sure. Of course it will. But people have been predicting the imminent collapse of the North Korean nightmare for years now, and the Dear Leader's still there, and plans for the succession of the Fat Son are well advanced. Andrei Lankov doubts that we'll see change anytime soon, even with that tricky dynastic succession to negotiate:

History shows that civilian revolutions are not typically responsible for bringing down the most barbaric dictatorships.

To illustrate this point, within four years of seizing power in 1976, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge managed to massacre around 20% of the entire country’s population. Despite that, it would be fair to say that there was little internal uprising against them.

Cambodian people chose not to speak up against the regime, knowing that to do so would risk immediate arrest, inhumane abuse and death, not just for oneself but one’s entire family. In the end, what brought this unprecedentedly murderous dictatorship down were not domestic civilian forces, but the military of communist neighbor Vietnam, which had elected to follow a more moderate course.

There are other similar examples in history. Those who have the will and the ways to massacre the necessary number of innocent civilians in order to maintain power do not tend to spend much time worrying about revolutions. See Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong and even Kim Il Sung.

Those who live under a system of absolute surveillance are unable to organize, and see rebellion as no different from suicide. Conversely, the only regimes that have ever been toppled by revolution have been ones that allowed their people a measure of social freedoms, overlooked the spread of alternative ideas and did not participate in ‘excessive’ brutality.

It's a lesson the Kim dynasty has learned very well.