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Nonetheless, rationality -- even in the face of what is now widespread North Korean deprivation and hunger to the point of starvation, by many accounts -- has not been Pyongyang's strong suit. With hardline communism having collapsed all over the world, Kim Il Sung's ruling philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance, became exposed as a transparent failure and fraud. With shortages of essential supplies that used to be delivered on soft terms from Moscow and Beijing, the theoretically supreme independence of the North has become deepening economic despair. Yet the regime has soldiered on with its old ways, apparently in dread for its survival.
"We have to acknowledge collapse and a German-style unification by absorption as a real possibility," says Sohn Hak Kyu, a spokesman for South Korea's ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "On the one hand, this would be a great historic event. On the other, it will cost a lot." One recent study in Seoul estimated that it would take $1.2 trillion and perhaps 20 years to raise the North's economy to parity with the South's -- an effort that would cripple Seoul's prosperity. Even short of that, a tidal wave of refugees crossing the DMZ is a possible nightmare to come.
Far from being a firm ally any longer, one of the North's new refugee | destinations, Russia, has lined up with U.S. efforts to leash the Kims. Denis Dragounsky, a political commentator in Moscow, says Russians are shrugging off the fall of Kim Il Sung with determined indifference: no sorrow was in evidence for one of their final remaining geopolitical embarrassments. But he conceded, "For the remaining Bolshevik believers, they will be depressed that they have lost the last true survivor. All that is left for them now is Cuba."
Whether the communist beat goes on north of the 38th parallel in Asia is currently of secondary importance. The Great Leader bequeathed his people one of the greatest confusions and challenges to face any society. The Dear Leader is not likely to save them from a painful future.