Report looks at what could happen if North Korea falls

[unhappycamper]

Report looks at what could happen if North Korea falls
By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, February1, 2009

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — Nearly half a million troops drawn from South Korean, U.S. and other allied forces might be needed to cope with a collapse of North Korea if its military was to respond by mounting an insurgency against foreign forces, according to a report issued by the private Council on Foreign Relations.

Countering such an insurgency would likely take a force of 460,000 troops — more than three times the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, said the report, "Preparing for Sudden Change in North Korea." The Council, founded in 1921, is a New York-based private think tank.

Its report, released last week, outlines an array of prospective problems if the process of changing leaders in the totalitarian North went awry and the state collapsed.

With no clear successor to paramount leader Kim Jong Il, "instability and even regime change" could ensue should he die suddenly or become incapacitated, the report said. Kim has reportedly been in poor health recently.

"The country’s cult-like political system, its relative geographical and political isolation, the absence of any real civil society, and repressive state control all clearly reduce the impetus and opportunities for change from below," it said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60364