Despite bluster, N. Korea could be about to collapse

A recent example of the North's aggressive behavior was the March 26 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which was sent to the bottom of the Yellow Sea by a torpedo likely fired from a submarine. Evidence, including findings from a recent multinational investigation, points to North Korea as the aggressor. Forty-six sailors on the Cheonan perished in this incident that shocked and infuriated the South Korean public.

South Korea's leaders have found it difficult to know exactly how to respond. The South issued condemnations of the North's aggression, but the only response they've received from the North is the same threatening propaganda that's been coming out of this reclusive state for the past half-century.

But beyond all the blustering and threats to “rain fire from the sky,” North Korea's government could be teetering on the brink of collapse. George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, one of the most prestigious private intelligence firms in the U.S., predicts in his best-selling book “The Next 100 Years” that North and South Korea will be reunited, “well before 2030.”

Other prognosticators have set the date of collapse much closer, to only several years from today. Korea-watchers point to two issues that could herald the end of the world's only communist dynasty: squabbles over succession following the death of Kim Jong-il — who has suffered from poor health for years — and serious economic woes that have recently affected a large part of the North's society, wiping out savings and increasing discontent.

One of the factors that brought on the collapse of the Soviet Union is also at play here: the impossibility of denying the reality that life is better in free-market societies. Images of life in vibrant South Korea have made their way across the border in the form of soap operas that are popular, although banned, in the North. Smuggled cell phones, radios, TVs and even limited Internet connections have done their part to help create cracks in the North's official line that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is some kind of egalitarian paradise.

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