News reports are circulating that Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of North Korea, may have "suffered a serious health setback:"

U.S. intelligence officials said today that North Korean leader Kim
Jong Il may have suffered a serious health setback, amid reports that
the 66-year-old dictator had failed to appear at an important
celebration of his country's anniversary.

An intelligence official said it appeared that Kim "has suffered a
health setback, potentially a stroke." The official said the episode
was believed to have occurred in the last couple of weeks, noting that
U.S. officials are watching the development closely because of the
far-reaching effects it could have on North Korean affairs.

    Two things.

     First, let's stay away from the sloppy invocation of "Confucianism" in describing the nature of the NK regime.  Just because a megalomaniacal East Asian dictator arranges for his son to succeed him does not mean that Confucianism is somehow in play.  After all, Confucius and Mencius both pushed against hereditary succession.  The sage-emperor Yao, a favorite in Confucian circles, did not push for his son to succeed him but sought out and trained Shun, who himself became a sage-emperor.  Authoritarian patrilineal succession is not a Confucian ideal.  

     Second, I sense the possibility of a long-term irony.  Everyone disdains the Kims of NK, and they have earned that disdain.  But, if Kim Jong-il dies and, further, if that sets off a political struggle and crisis that ultimately brings down the hated NK regime (I know, a lot of "ifs" here), and if the Korean peninsula unifies under an effective central government extending up from the South, what does that bode for East Asian international politics?  The Koreans will be happy, for sure.  But once the economic wreckage of the North is cleared up (I think this could happen fairly quickly: a decade or two), what we will have is a strong, unified Korea, with a global top-ten economy and nuclear capability.  That power will provide its leadership with the confidence to steer a foreign policy course that is independent of China and the US and Japan.  And while that might be OK for US interests, it might raise some anxieties in China and Japan.   Question:  will a strong, unified Korea make it more likely for Japan to build a nuclear weapons capability and will China respond, in turn, by expanding its nuclear arsenal?  I don't mean to get all John Mearsheimer here (his most dire predictions have not come to pass, after all), but I wonder if some in Beijing might look back 30 years from now and wistfully long for the relative stability of the Kims…..