Choi Sun-sil's collapse theory was
rooted in Shamanism, many analyst's predictions are just as shaky
Everyone is interested in
the notion that North Korea is on the verge of collapse. The idea has been
around a long time, certainly since the early 1990s, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, if not before. Peter Hayes and David F. von Hippel, writing in
2011 commented:
“‘Collapsists” have been
arguing since the end of the Cold War that the DPRK ‘is about to
collapse.’ Indeed, one notable expert and colleague, Aidan Foster-Carter,
reissued his latest prediction in this vein on November 15, 2009, saying that
the DPRK could “fall
at any moment,”—a claim no more persuasive than that made by Foster-Carter
in 1992.“
Aidan Foster-Carter, in
fact, found that with age comes wisdom and in 2015 bravely and disarmingly wrote:
“Enough of this nonsense.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Sound advice,
whether or not Keynes actually said it. I resisted right up until 2009, but
finally had to admit the force of Bruce Cumings’ jibe at all of us who thought
this way: “When does the statute of limitations run out on being systematically
wrong?'”
The title of Foster-Carter’s
essay (on 38 North) was entitled “Obama Comes Out as an NK Collapsist” and
he was lamenting that the illusion of Collapsism was informing US policy and
specifically that of ‘Strategic Patience.’ If North Korea was about to collapse, the reasoning
ran, there was no reason to negotiations.
There is still no shortage
of predictions of imminent collapse.
Journalists, especially
those not familiar with Korea, are prone to this because it makes a good story
and the future cannot be disproved in the present. And by the time the future
arrives the media, with its famously short memory, has moved on.
A couple of recent examples:
Julian Ryall, writing in April in the respected official German public
broadcaster Deutsche Welle (now branded by the initials DW), asked: “Is
North Korea finally close to collapse?“. Deutsche Welle, incidentally,
has a curious Korean echo since it means ‘German Wave.’ Over in the U.S., Jamie
Metzl had an article in The National Interest in June with the
splendidly apocalyptic heading: “Doomsday:
The Coming Collapse of North Korea.”
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE?
People in the
military-industrial-security complex, of course, are not left out of this.
There is, for instance, General Walter
Sharp former commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, who was reported in
May this year saying “there will be instability in North Korea that I believe
will lead to the collapse of North Korea much sooner than many of us think.”
Generals, it must be
admitted, have a certain dispensation here: lying and deception is part of the
job description going back to Homer in one direction and Sun Zi-an another.
They are allowed to say things not because they believe them but to achieve a
particular effect.
People in the security
industry take a different tack, often slipping in words such as ‘possibility’
or ‘contingency’ in case the predictions are not fulfilled before retirement.
Thus we have, for instance, Bruce Bennet’s RAND report Preparing for the
Possibility of a North Korean Collapse.
But few serious and informed
commenters outside the security industry are Collapsists these days. Not
(any longer) Foster- Carter. Nor Georgy Toloraya. In May 2016 Toloraya
wrote:
“Some commentators in Seoul
have concluded that unification is not only desirable but also quickly
achievable, as evidenced by indications that the North Korean regime is about
to collapse. Though I see no signs of brewing instability as I write this in
Pyongyang.”
In November after another
visit to Pyongyang, where he observed economic growth and a mood of optimism
(which led him reluctantly to conclude that the Byungjin policy was a success,
an opinion supported by a recent NK Pro poll),
he opined that ‘Waiting
for the regime collapse is hardly a choice’ for foreign policymakers.
Andrei
Lankov is a bit of an outsider here, predicting in July that “a
revolutionary collapse of the Kim family regime still seems to be highly
likely.”
THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS
Where did Obama get his
Collapsism from? If not quite from the horse’s mouth then probably from
the stable next door: the president of South Korea. That was initially Lee
Myung-bak and then, of course, Park Geun-hye.
Foster-Carter has also taken
a swipe at Park Geun-hye’s ‘jackpot’ speech, which was based on the idea that
North Korea would collapse and the South would absorb it in one big swallow,
with no indigestion to follow. This was in an article in the Wall
Street Journal early in 2014 entitled “Jackpot
or Crackpot? Park on Reunification”.
Crackpot? How right he was!
It turns out that Park
Geun-hye was probably convinced of the imminent collapse of the North by none
other than Choi Sun-sil. Hankyoreh Washington correspondent Yi
Yong-in, has written of his difficulties in trying to explain to U.S.
Korean experts what was behind the strange twists and turns in Park Geun-hye’s
North Korea policy, and his embarrassment in finding out that the answer was
most likely Choi Sun-sil.
“Even after I was assigned
to the United States, I was asked by American experts on the Korean Peninsula
on several occasions about who in the world was giving advice to Park,” he
wrote. “These experts did not understand why Park was so committed to the idea
of North Korean regime collapse.”
FRAGILE MYSTIC
What led Choi Sun-sil to her
judgment on North Korea and her advice to the President of South Korea? Was she
an avid reader of NK News, 38 North, or Yonhap and KCNA? Perhaps.
But more likely she resorted
to family skills in the Shamanistic tradition, following in her father’s
footsteps. Her father, Choi Tae-min, reportedly won Park Geun-hye’s confidence
after he predicted
the death of her father, Park Chung-hee, although he doesn’t appear to have
given any details and his warning was sufficiently ambiguous to be subject to
all sorts of interpretations after the event.
But that is how the business
works if you are to be successful. Choi Tae-min, who was described in a cable
from the U.S. embassy as a ‘Rasputin,’ managed to acquire a fortune through his
influence over Park Geun-hye and his daughter seems to have followed in his
footsteps.
Both have been linked to
Shamanism, much to the indignation of real shamans – “Don’t
call Choi a shaman, it’s a disgrace to shamans“ – reported the Korea Times.
The same paper also posed the question: “Choi
Soon-sil – Shaman or con artist?“.
Whether shaman possess
special skills in making predictions is perhaps a matter of personal judgment.
Certainly, the Mexican
shaman who predicted in January that Trump would lose the election in
November didn’t do too well, but maybe Korean shamans are better.
In any case it is curious to
think that the North
Korea policy of the United States, the country that did so much to expand
the role of science, which put a man on the moon, which has some 16
intelligence agencies and whose National
Security Agency monitors the world’s communications, was perhaps ultimately
based on the shamanistic divinations of Park Geun-hye’s con-woman confidante.
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