Since defecting from his post at the North Korean embassy in London last summer, Thae Yong-ho has become the go-to source for media seeking hard-won insights into his secretive homeland. Thae, the former deputy ambassador to the U. K., has offered a bold prediction: Kim Jong-un\u2019s regime would collapse, and possibly not before long.
In a series of interviews in Seoul, Thae said North Koreans were becoming increasingly aware of the deficiencies of their nominally socialist system as the leadership lost its stranglehold on information \u2014 paving the way for an inevitable popular uprising.
Predicting the end of North Korea has a long history marked by countless false dawns. Claims of impending collapse gained prominence after the death in 1994 of North Korea\u2019s founder Kim Il-sung, the current leader\u2019s grandfather, only for his son, Kim Jong-il, to smoothly take the reins of power. Former President Bill Clinton was reported to have agreed to an ill-fated denuclearization deal with Pyongyang that year largely out of a belief the regime\u2019s end was near. Nearly a decade and a half later, Kim Jong-il\u2019s sudden death again sparked predictions of regime implosion, only for his son to successfully assume power and keep the system intact.
\u201cPrevious predictions about regime collapse or regime change were not straw-in-the-wind guesses either; they were made on intelligence, defector testimonies, and careful political estimations of the regime\u2019s stability,\u201d Baek said. \u201cMuch of the media is quick to adopt shocking narratives about predicted collapse scenarios because shocking stories get more views. I can\u2019t blame them. But just like any other subject matter, readers, including myself, ought to be careful in believing what headlines state about one of the least understood countries in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n