Future Of N. Korea In Peril, Agency Says

U.S. intelligence experts say that North Korea faces an increasing likelihood of political and economic collapse.

“The likelihood that North Korea will continue to exist in its current state 15 years from now is low-to-moderate,” the Defense Intelligence Agency reported. “Unless solutions to the North’s economic problems are found, the regime will not be able to survive. It will have to adapt its slide into irrelevance or collapse (or) implode.”

The report, prepared last spring, was read at a public hearing Wednesday by Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio.

U.S. and North Korean diplomats this week are meeting at the United Nations on a U.S. proposal for fourway talks involving the United States, China, North Korea and South Korea. They are also discussing a long-term arrangement to provide nuclear power generation to North Korea in exchange for an end to that country’s suspected nuclear weapons program.