N. Korea restores nuke reactor, border worries

updated 4:58 p.m. ET Sept. 20, 2008

AT THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Korea - Dank and mossy, the "invasion" tunnels dug by North Korea beneath its border with the South are a grim reminder the two sides remain at war, locked in a tenuous, decades-long truce watched over by soldiers, tanks and barbed wire.

Now, the communist regime's confirmation it is reviving its nuclear reactor and speculation about Stalinist leader Kim Jong Il's ill health are heating up tensions, with some fearing Kim's death — with no named successor — could cause the regime to fall and hordes of North Koreans to flee.

Analysts say the South Korean government is working on a contingency plan laying out how to handle potential crises, from a nuclear leak to a regime collapse.

Meanwhile, at the border — the world's most heavily fortified — life goes on in what passes for normal for the 2 1/2-mile-wide strip along the 38th parallel that separates the two states.

South Korean soldiers stood guard Friday as tourists milled about Panmunjom, the "Freedom Village" inside the Demilitarized Zone. They gawked at North Korean soldiers, who in turn peered through binoculars trained southward.

At a South Korean military camp in Cheorwon, near the border, troops on break sheltered in the shade smoking cigarettes. In the barracks, soldiers played board games while others wrote letters home.

There was no palpable sense of danger along the border, but experts say officials are preparing for the worst.

"We are concerned about instability," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday in London. "I think that all of North Korea's neighbors are concerned about instability, in no small part because of the possibility of large flows of refugees."

Impoverished North Korea has a population of 23 million, and more than 6 million of them are going hungry, according to the United Nations' World Food Program.

Until the early 1990s, the number of North Korean defectors — many slipping across the Yalu River into China — numbered a handful a year. But with food scarcities worsening since then from floods and mismanagement, the number has risen steadily to more than 1,000 defecting yearly, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

'Dear Leader'
Former political prisoners in North Korea describe a regime that demands total loyalty to Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader." His father, guerrilla fighter-turned-communist leader Kim Il Sung, founded and built the Stalinist nation with an iron fist, brooking no opposition and dispatching dissenters to grueling labor camps.

He also engineered a cult of personality that encompassed him and his son, who took over after his father's 1994 death in what became the world's first communist dynasty.

But whether the Kim dynasty will continue into a third generation remains to be seen.

South Korean and U.S. officials say Kim, 66, suffered a stroke. Reports say that foreign surgeons were flown to Pyongyang to operate on Kim last month and that his condition is serious.

Although Kim missed a recent ceremony marking the communist state's birth 60 years ago, North Korea denies he is ill.

The concern among Korea watchers is the lack of a clear successor. Kim has not been grooming any of his three sons to take over, and analysts say none is qualified, raising concerns about a power vacuum.

Is collapse eminent?
But Peter Beck, a professor at American University in Washington, doubts collapse is eminent. He said top North Korean officials likely are holed up trying to determine how to proceed with a military collective assuming leadership.

"Right now they're in hunker-down mode; they're not in lash-out mode," Beck said. "The last thing they can deal with now is a major confrontation."

But he said a contingency plan is long overdue for South Korea and the United States, which has the Army's 2nd Infantry Division and air wings based in the South to bolster its ally's defenses.

"Even though I think the odds (of a regime collapse) are still quote low, it's clear there hasn't been a sufficient contingency plan," Beck said. "You always have to prepare for the worst."

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