By Franz-Stefan Gady
A U.S.-South Korean military victory over North Korea is not preordained. In fact, as a I argued yesterday (See: “Military Stalemate: How North Korea Could Win a War With the US”), a bloody military stalemate is just as likely as a costly victory over the Kim Jong-un regime. However, it goes without saying that we should continue to entertain the possibility that Republic of Korea (ROK) and U.S. forces succeed in defeating the conventional forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Yet, what happens the day after the Second Korean War?
For one thing, it seems clear that North Koreans will not greet U.S. and ROK forces as liberators. As John Reid wrote for The Diplomat in May:
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It would be a grave error to assume that North Koreans will simply be overwhelmed with joy at having food, iPhones, and K-pop. Much like in post-war Iraq, the vacuum created by the loss of an authoritarian regime cannot simply be filled with platitudes of freedom and liberty.
Indeed, there is a real possibility that a violent collapse of the Kim Jong-un regime could lead to an insurgency in a post-DPRK North Korea. We tend to forget that the North Korean state has been built up around a “guerilla myth,”as Bruce Cumings notes.
A 2017 study by the U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) at SAIS finds that a collapse of the North Korean state could “open the door to potential civil war inside the DPRK as well as resistance to an intervention seeking to reunify the Korean peninsula.” Consequently, “politicians and military planners alike must take seriously the possibility of insurgency in any state following rapid and violent governmental change.” A number of factors could make North Korea ripe for an insurgency.
https://thediplomat.com/2017/10/would-china-and-russia-support-a-north-korean-insurgency/
