Wikileaks and North Korea

If you've been following the news, you'll know that Wikileaks has been releasing a trove of around 250,000 U.S. State Department documents -- more a flood than a leak, really -- pertaining to all sorts of diplomatic issues. There's an interesting but not surprising story on Canadian relations with the U.S. (NYT), and a fascinating cover story on Wikileaks' philosophy and next targets (Forbes).

I wanted to comment, however, on the revelations about North Korea. The main message of the cables seems to be that the world is still mainly in the dark on North Korea's motivations and actions. None of the cables predicted the sinking of the Cheonan in March or the recent shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.

However, there's some new information on what may happen in the next few years. For example, an account of a meeting between the U.S. Ambassador and Korea's Vice Foreign Minister:

ROK Vice Foreign Minister and former ROK Six-Party Talks (6PT) Head of Delegation Chun Yung-woo predicted that China would not be able to stop North Korea's collapse following the death of Kim Jong-il (KJI). The DPRK, Chun said, had already collapsed economically; following the death of KJI, North Korea would collapse politically in "two to three years."

The Korean official continues to speculate on China's response, which I have noted may be the key piece of the puzzle. Although he notes that China is content with the status quo in North Korea and is unwilling to use whatever leverage it has to force change in that country, he also reads the tea leaves on a Chinese position in the event of a collapse:

Chun argued that, in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly "not welcome" any U.S. military presence north of the DMZ. Again citing his conversations with Cui Tiankai and Liu Jieyi, Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a "benign alliance" -- as long as Korea was not hostile towards China.

And despite the long-held view in China that North Korea was needed as a buffer state to the U.S. ally of the South, he sees hope:

[Some younger Chinese] officials, Chun said, were ready to "face the new reality" that the DPRK now had little value to China as a buffer state -- a view that since North Korea's 2006 nuclear test had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC leaders.

Clearly, this is the view of one leader, albeit senior, in the Korean government. As the NY Times story reminds us of the cables:

They also show that talk of the North’s collapse may be rooted more in hope than in any real strategy: similar predictions were made in 1994 when the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, suddenly died, leaving his son to run the most isolated country in Asia. And a Chinese expert warned, according to an American diplomat, that Washington was deceiving itself once again if it believed that “North Korea would implode after Kim Jong-il’s death.”

I suppose I would be a bit more relieved if the Wikileaks flood showed that American and South Korean officials had a bit more information about the North Korean regime. But, as the NYT notes, the cables are "long on educated guesses and short on facts" - a situation in which we all find ourselves in regarding the volatile and unpredictable North. As always, I'll keep you posted on more developments.