ANALYSIS: SAD BUT PROBABLY TRUE. South Korea Needs to Realize That North Korea Isn’t Going to Collapse.

Even if it violates much of what we “know” in political science and economics, it has some source of strength—extreme nationalism, a genuine belief in the Kim cult, the regime’s willingness to do anything to survive—that helps it through crises which would bring down similar nation states. North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War; the cutoff of Soviet aid; the death of founder-turned-godhead Kim Il-sung; the famine of the late 1990s; the death of the founder’s heir, Kim Jong-il; and ever-tightening United Nations sanctions. If the North has survived all this, then none of the various ideas out there for change—chasing North Korean money in Chinese banks, inward information flows, airstrikes on missile sites, more sanctions—are a likely to be a magic bullet. All are worth discussion, of course, but given what the regime has survived to date, we must admit that it will be with us for a long time. This will be a long, grinding stalemate—as it has been to date—in which the side that “hangs tough” will triumph.

Predicting the end of the Kim regime is like economists predicting the next recession: They have called seven out of the last zero times.