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New North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un pays his respects to his father and former leader Kim Jong-il, lying in state at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang in this still picture taken from video footage aired by KRT (Korean Central TV of the North) Dec. 20, 2011.Reuters TV

The passing of Kim Jong-il constitutes a political earthquake in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The North Korean transition is being accompanied by the ritualized mourning that followed the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. But this period immediately following Kim Jong-il's death is also being closely scrutinized by foreign ministries and intelligence agencies, who will be alert to the implications for the stability of the Korean Peninsula given the million-strong Korean People's Army, whose nuclear and missile capacity threatens South Korea, Japan and U.S. forces in East Asia.

Kim Jong-il was never as robust as his father, who served 46 years as top leader in North Korea until being named "Eternal President" in the DPRK constitution following his death. Kim Jong-il never achieved the same profile as his father, either within North Korea or internationally, but neither was he pushed aside by party or military rivals as many observers had expected he would be.

North Korea's achievement of nuclear weapons status took place on Kim Jong-il's watch, and perhaps more remarkably, a regime that many had predicted would collapse in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union managed to survive, outlasting almost all communist states.

What Kim Jong-il never managed to do was to undertake a reform of North Korea's feeble economic base. During visits to North Korea over two decades, I found little interest in reform of any sort. China repeatedly organized tours for him of China's reformed state enterprises, and lively commercially focused cities, but with no significant or successful subsequent uptake by Pyongyang.

Surrounded by states that are either prosperous or en route to prosperity, North Korea maintained its brittle stability through self-imposed isolation from the international community. North Koreans are dependent on the scraps of information that filter through the official media, and are closely supervised by agents of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

There is no easy explanation for the longevity of the regime and its remarkable endurance in the face of economic stagnation and decline. Korean monarchial traditions may have more to tell us about the DPRK's transition system than Marx or Lenin.

Apart from the suffering of North Korea's people, the regime might not have attracted that much attention from the outside world had it not acquired a reputation for unpredictable military actions, ranging from sinking South Korean naval vessels to the development of nuclear weapons and the export of missile technology to dodgy regimes.

Given the relatively short time that Kim Jong-un has been designated as heir, it is unlikely that he will have consolidated his own power base within the party and military. However, predications of the imminent collapse of the regime have consistently been off base. A transition to the youngest Kim, who has spent years living abroad, could mean that some measure of internal economic or political liberalization is now possible. But there are also risks that a struggle for power within the leadership might lead to risky attention-seeking by the regime.

It is a safe bet that Pyongyang's generals wish to die in bed, but North Korea has a history of military threats used to extract concessions or economic assistance from nervous foreign states. With a South Korean government increasingly willing to push back in the face of provocation, there are also risks that miscalculations could trigger a conflict.

But let us rather hope that the arrival of a younger Kim will trigger economic and political developments that would offer hope to the North Korean people and greater stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Gordon Houlden, a former Canadian diplomat, now director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, was the first Canadian diplomat and the most senior Canadian diplomat to date to have visited the DPRK.

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