Eberstadt on NorKo endgame scenarios

Eberstadt, almost always the smartest guy in the room on North Korea, joins the recent trend of analyzing possible endgame scenarios in this WSJ opinion piece.

He starts by paraphrasing Churchill:  "Unification would be the worst possible outcome for Korea--except for all the other alternatives.

Eberstadt says he expects NorKo to continue upping the nuclear ante--as is trying to sell.

So the big alternatives post-Kim is that the military takes over openly and continues down this path, or internal instability with rivals to the throne duking it out (he says civil war with nukes is possible because these guys have no trouble killing lots of their own people--as evidenced by the famines of the 1990s).

The most interesting possibility is that the Chinese step in and sort of take over, a subject long floated by Chinese academics, but Nick discounts this in the manner that I have recently:  Beijing plans on busting-out the joint in terms of mineral wealth before plotting any serious endgame.  Of course, at some point in that process, South Korea would have to deal with the PRC.

So unification looks better to Eberstadt.

Let's hope Seoul gets the memo.