Kim Jong-un probably isn’t dead, but if he is, that still isn’t good news for North Korea. If he dies, his sister Kim Yo-jong is technically next in line; a lot of people are on this weird quasi-feminist #GirlPower trip and believe that she would democratize North Korea and end 80 years of authoritarianism, which would just not happen. She’s just as much a part of the Kim cult of personality as her brother and father and grandfather before her, she would be just as bad if not worse because she could count on the rest of the world to underestimate her so she could get away with anything. That is if the generals even let her take power; there could very well be a coup, with one of Kim Jong-un’s lieutenants trying to take over with Chinese support. The easiest transition of power right now is for Kim Jong-un to just not be dead yet; that would simplify things greatly.
If Kim Jong-un dies, and if Kim Yo-jong takes over, and none of the generals try to oppose her, then the best case scenario will be status quo; the forced labor camps will stay open, people and their families will be unpersoned for thought crimes as part of the Orwellian surveillance state, the nuclear arsenal won’t be dismantled, etc. The only difference would be that Donald Trump would almost certainly want to fuck her. She’d be one of the most powerful women on the planet, and he thinks he deserves some tail after the last four years he’s been through; I don’t think he would come right out and proposition her directly, but I know for a fact that he would try to do something horrible in the face of the Me Too Movement, like “at our next summit, why don’t you and I have a private dinner at my hotel room? Have some wine, listen to some music, just talk, maybe see whatever happens, you know? It sure is hot in here, I’m gonna take off my suit jacket, unbutton my shirt, get nice and comfy. You can get comfy too, if you want.”
This is getting pretty close to the slippery slope fallacy or a straw man argument, getting mad at a hypothetical, but every assumption is grounded in reality. Everything I predict he will do is based on that which he has already done and reacted under similar circumstances. This is the guy who says exercise is bad for you, suggested injecting people with soap to kill the virus, complained that a journalist he hates should return their Noble Prize when he meant to say Nobel Prize when he actually meant to say Pulitzer Prize, bragged that the thing he and his daughter have most in common is sex, and made a joke about fucking supermodels in the same breath as talking about deaths from coronavirus. We know exactly who this man is. We know how he acts. We know what he wants and what he’s willing to do to get it.
If Kim Yo-jong takes over North Korea, Donald Trump will try to fuck her, get mad that he can’t, and become belligerent, leading us closer to nuclear war than ever before as he once again tries his hand at brinkmanship. The first few weeks will be spent with him singing her praise and calling her the best leader Korea has ever seen, then she will reject his advances, and he will turn on a dime to call her an ugly hag cow with no experience and a dumb name which he will pretend he doesn’t remember.
