The Death of Kim Jong Il – a comment by Professor Arne Westad

The news of Kim Jong-il’s death have been received with hopefulness in the West and with a certain sense of dread in East Asia. While Western policy-makers first a foremost saw Kim as the tyrannical head of a despotic state, a monster who mistreated his own population while himself living in luxury, an increasing number of Asians came to view him, in all his grotesqueness, as a guarantor for some form of stability on the Korean peninsula. For the latter, it was hard to imagine any change that would be – at least in the short run – for the better. So great is the fear of the consequences of a North Korean collapse in the region that even Kim’s belated turn to China was seen as a plus by other countries in the region, in the vague hope that Beijing would help steer North Korean foreign policy along a smoother course.