Here’s an enlightening interview with Marcus Noland, currently a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and an expert on North Korea.  According to Mr. Noland, a growth rate of 7% and an economically different North Korea by 2018 is in the offing:

“I would be very surprised if we sat down 10 years from now and North Korea had not changed significantly,” said Marcus Noland, an expert on the North Korean economy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The fact that the DPRK is surrounded by high growth countries (China to the north and west, Japan to the east, and South Korea to the south) and continues to have a moribund economy points to the potential for growing 6 to 7 percent every year - as well as a testimony to the real and significant internal problems within Pyongyang.

“The way I would describe North Korea today is that its government is extremely insecure about the domestic political implications of a potential economic change. As a consequence, it is highly risk-averse.”

DPRK is “risk averse”?  Such irony:  What about all the would-be-investors in North Korea: they sure are risk averse as well…

Mr. Noland observed that all authoritarian regimes face problems with succession.  But due to the extreme cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-il and the lack of an obvious successor, that this regime faces an unusually profound issue with respect to succession.

While acknowledging that most analysts agree on the potential for an emerging collective form of leadership based on the National Defense Commission:

“I am not sure if this outline of a collective form of leadership is sustainable in the long run. I would expect a new situation, perhaps analogous to the situation experienced by South Korea following the assassination of former President Park Chung-hee, where there was a real uncertainty for months about who exactly was running the country before General Chun Doo-hwan eventually emerged as the supreme leader,” he said. “I think something like that is likely to be the case in North Korea in coming years.”

Mr. Noland continues on to discuss two paths to a unified Korea: 1) a slow and protracted consensual coming together of the two sides or 2) obviously some sort of North Korean collapse and absorption by the South ala Germany.

For China’s part, it seems to be preparing for the eventual unification of the Koreas as mentioned in this article about the economic development of the Paektu-san/Changbai-shan region.