Winter chill in Pyongyang

Riding the wave of missile-and-nuclear tests in 2009, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il capped 2010 with a much-anticipated crowning of his third son as heir and two deadly assaults on his southern neighbour — the sinking of a warship in March and the shelling of an inhabited island in November.

By beating against South Korea's shore, Kim expects to reap in 2011 the fruits of his extortionist labour. His new year's wishes are not entirely misplaced, as such has been the basic dynamic of inter-Korean relations the past dozen years: a potent formula of provocation-and-concession constantly applied by the North, and an infant formula of appeasement-or-war uniformly accepted by the South.

As time runs out on the tenure of South Korea President Lee Myung Bak and US President Barack Obama, the temptation to take the North Korean bait will probably grow, not diminish. But Lee and Obama should not be so hasty to react to Kim's calculated provocations.

In actuality, now is the winter of Kim's discontent. He must contend with the collective weight of a nearly two decade-old food catastrophe, increasing influx of information, and outflux of citizens across the border. Add to that another hereditary communist power transition (to his son, Kim Jong-un), and the growing reality that even in the case of a leader-for-life, death will have its day.

Now is the time to constrict the Kim regime by exploiting these weaknesses rather than legitimising the regime with more concessionary diplomacy.

Negotiations, in order to be effective, must be buttressed with sustained sanctions (pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1874) and crackdown on North Korea's multifarious illicit financial transactions. To relax these measures in return for empty promises would be a folly.

Uncertain future

In the past, Kim could bide his time in dealing with leaders of democracies who came and went via elections. He was unencumbered by a South Korean or American leader's short-term political need to pull off a ‘legacy' in the form of a paper agreement with North Korea. Such a luxury is no longer available today to the 69-year-old Kim who is a recovering stroke patient.

As Kim's minutes hasten to their end, his immediate future appears littered with unprecedented uncertainties: the exact time, scale, and duration of concessionary diplomacy from a more restrained Seoul and Washington; the ever-increasing defection of his own hungry people to the Korean state south of the border; his youthful heir's unproven qualities, and the palpable inevitability of his own mortality.

Kim's designation of his son, Kim Jung-un, at age 26, as a four-star general and vice-chairman of the communist party's Central Military Committee in September indicates the imprudent impulses of an impatient patient.

In the early half of 2011, the Kim dynasty will be particularly prone to flaunt its military hardware as it celebrates three red letter days in close succession: Kim Jong-un's celebrated his birthday on Saturday; Kim Jong-il celebrates his on February 16; and the dynastic founder, Kim Il-sung's birthday falls on April 15.

The Kim clan will probably view it in their strategic best interests to exercise its "sovereign right" and conduct another nuclear test — particularly its first uranium test — before April 15, known throughout the kingdom as the ‘Day of Sun'.

The year 2011 is Juche 100 (juche is the philosophy of self-reliance) by the North Korean calendar, a retroactive centennial of the state creed. In such a critical year, Kim will presumably try his best to burnish his son's hereditary credentials and cement his own legacy.

Out of sheer survival instinct, the Kim regime will continue in the coming weeks to coerce and cajole its adversaries to deliver economic concessions.

For Seoul and Washington to abet this dynastic succession process with yet another round of concessions would be self-defeating. Rather, they must, when the time comes, negotiate from a position of strength.