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35 Washington Q. 7 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/wingtqurl35 and id is 1 raw text is: Victor D. Cha and Nicholas D. Anderson A North Korean Spring? Is revolution similar to the Arab Spring possible in North Korea? The answer from most scholars and intelligence analysts has been no-that the Pyongyang regime's stability in the aftermath of the events in the Middle East and North Africa is an old question that was answered in the 1990s when the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea) faced the most critical test of its life, and survived. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the drastic cuts in patron aid from China, and the onset of famine that killed hundreds of thousands all constituted the ultimate test of DPRK stability, and the regime staggered on through it all. Thus, the assumption is that the Arab Spring has little relevance to the DPRK. The scholarly literature tends to support this assessment. Scholars like Georgetown University's Daniel Byman have argued that Kim Jong-il has effectively coup-proofed himself through an elaborate system of patronage, bribery, and draconian rule.1 This may be true, but the phenomenal events that have taken place in the Middle East and North Africa have shown us two things. First, in spite of all of the reasons for thinking that things won't change, they could, and quite suddenly. And second, the mere presence of variables that could spell the collapse of an authoritarian regime tells us nothing about when or if that collapse could happen. Among the ruins of collapsed dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, experts have picked out causes that have long existed, yet they cannot explain why they led to collapse in 2011 as opposed to years, or even decades, earlier. Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Muammar Qaddafi of Libya had each been in power longer than Kim Jong-il in North Korea. Can we simply assume Victor D. Cha is Senior Adviser at CSIS, and D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government and Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He served as director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council from 2004-2007, and may be reached at VCha@csis.org. Nicholas D. Anderson is a graduate student in the Security Studies program at Georgetown, and may be reached at Na334@georgetown.edu. Copyright © 2012 Center for Strategic and International Studies The Washington Quarterly 35:1 pp. 7-24 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2012.641728 THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY U WINTER 2012

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