TESTIMONY: What China is preparing after Kim Jong-un — and why the West must worry

A regime with no designated successor in a world under pressure

There are questions that Western capitals avoid asking aloud because the answer is too destabilizing. The succession of power in North Korea is one of them. Kim Jong-un is 41 years old in 2026. His health has been the subject of speculation for years — prolonged absences, rumors of cardiac surgery, photographs showing a leader visibly overweight. He has no publicly designated successor. His daughter, Kim Ju-ae, has appeared alongside him at military ceremonies since 2022, but her formal designation as heir has not been officially confirmed. In this succession planning vacuum, China has begun positioning itself.

The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEIA) published an analysis in June 2026 that merits serious attention: Beijing is actively seeking to influence cadres within the Korean Workers' Party in anticipation of a post-Kim Jong-un transition. This influence strategy fits within a broader realignment: since 2022, North Korea has moved significantly closer to Russia — troop deployments, ammunition deliveries, military technology transfers. Beijing is watching this rapprochement with growing concern and working to preserve its influence over the Pyongyang regime.

I want to be honest about the limits of what I know. North Korean succession is not a subject on which solid evidence is available — by definition, everything that happens within the power circles in Pyongyang is opaque. What I present here are the analyses of serious researchers, not certainties. But uncertainty about the succession of a nuclear regime is itself information that demands to be addressed.

The June 2026 analysis on Beijing's positioning

The Korea Economic Institute of America's June 2026 analysis identifies a specific trend in Chinese policy toward North Korea: Beijing is intensifying its contacts with Korean Workers' Party cadres — not only with the immediate circle of Kim Jong-un, but with broader layers of the party apparatus. The implicit objective: to ensure that, whoever succeeds Kim, China will have interlocutors trained to maintain Pyongyang within its strategic orbit. This influence strategy is simultaneously preventive and competitive — preventive against the unpredictability of a sudden death of Kim, and competitive against the Russian-North Korean rapprochement that has transformed the regional dynamic since 2022.

Ellen Kim and the priority question: denuclearization or regime stability?

Researcher Ellen Kim of the KEIA, a specialist on the North Korean nuclear program and China-DPRK relations, analyzed in June 2026 how China is attempting to maintain a leading role in North Korea's future despite that rapprochement. Her work raises a fundamental question: does Beijing still want a denuclearized North Korea, or has regime stability become such an absolute priority that denuclearization is now secondary?

This question — denuclearization or stability? — is one of the most important in East Asian security. For decades, the West assumed China shared the denuclearization objective, even if it was in no rush to achieve it. If that assumption is wrong — if Beijing has decided that a stable nuclear DPRK is preferable to an unstable denuclearized one — then the entire framework of Western policy toward North Korea must be rethought.

Zero mention of denuclearization in official readouts

One of the most revealing indicators of the shift in China's position is precisely documented: the official Chinese readouts of summits between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un no longer mention the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This silence is not an oversight. In Chinese diplomacy, official texts are drafted with care and every omission is deliberate. For decades, joint declarations and readouts of Sino-North Korean meetings included a standard formulation on the objective of "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." That formulation has disappeared.

A tacit acceptance that reshapes regional policy

Experts cited in the KEIA analysis and in the work of the CSIS Korea Chair interpret this silence consistently: China has accepted, at least tacitly, the de facto nuclear status of North Korea. This tacit acceptance is itself a historic shift — the most significant in China's regional policy toward Pyongyang since the 1990s. And it is happening without declaration, without summit, without communiqué. In silence.

Silence as a statement of policy. Beijing does not say: "We accept a nuclear North Korea." It simply stops saying that it does not accept it. The distinction is legally important — no treaty is violated, no red line officially crossed. But politically, the message is received in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington with all the clarity of a formal declaration. This is the grammar of the silent diplomatic drift.

Pyongyang between two patrons: Moscow advances, Beijing watches

The deployment of approximately 12,000 North Korean soldiers in Russia and the Kursk region, the deliveries of over one million artillery shells and more than 100 ballistic missiles to the Russian military — these transfers, documented by Western intelligence services and confirmed by Ukrainian authorities — represent the most intense level of military cooperation ever observed between Moscow and Pyongyang. They create a dynamic that Beijing did not initiate and does not fully control.

Beijing's problem: a North Korean ally drifting toward Moscow

For China, a Kim Jong-un increasingly dependent on and close to Moscow is a troubling development. Beijing has always wanted a North Korea that remains within its strategic orbit — a buffer state between China and the American forces stationed in South Korea. If Pyongyang drifts toward a privileged relationship with Moscow, that equilibrium becomes complicated. Hence the intensification of Chinese contacts with Party cadres — a form of all-risks insurance for the post-Kim era, whatever form that transition takes.

There is something almost fascinating — in a macabre sense — about this competition for influence between Moscow and Beijing over a regime that, by every international standard, should be isolated and sanctioned. North Korea is not an ordinary diplomatic partner. It is a nuclear state run by a hereditary dictatorship. And yet, two great powers are competing for its future allegiance. That fact alone says a great deal about the state of the international order.

Washington and its allies already acknowledge the reality in practice

The June 2026 analysis by The Conversation on international efforts to end North Korea's nuclear program reaches an uncomfortable conclusion: those efforts have failed. North Korea possesses a nuclear arsenal estimated at several dozen warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, and a declared doctrine of preemptive use if the regime feels threatened. International sanctions have not stopped that development. Negotiations — from Geneva 1994 to Singapore 2018 — have all failed to produce real denuclearization.

A shift in American and allied diplomatic practice

Experts at the CSIS Korea Chair note that a shift has occurred in American and allied diplomatic practice: the United States, South Korea, and Japan have begun planning their strategic posture assuming that North Korea will keep its nuclear arsenal indefinitely — not because they accept it legally or morally, but because operational reality demands it. This unofficial, de facto recognition is the new foundation of deterrence policy in East Asia. It implies a profound reformulation of alliances and response capabilities.

I see no hypocrisy in this shift. I see a difficult honesty. Pretending that North Korea is going to be denuclearized when all the evidence indicates otherwise is to lie to one's own allies and one's own public. Acknowledging the North Korean nuclear reality is the prerequisite for building a real policy of deterrence and risk management. That is what the region's democracies are doing right now, in silence.

Instability, disputed succession, collapse — what experts project

Succession in North Korea is the catastrophic scenario everyone fears and no one knows how to manage. The scenarios considered by analysts include: an orderly dynastic succession (toward Kim Ju-ae or another family member), a succession by the military or party apparatus (one or more generals seize control), or a period of open instability involving internal power struggles. Each of these scenarios has dramatically different implications for regional security, for the management of the nuclear arsenal, and for the geopolitical positions of China and Russia.

The worst-case scenario: a North Korea in crisis with warheads under uncertain control

The worst-case scenario, according to most analysts, is not a stable dynastic succession — even at the cost of continuing the current regime. The worst-case scenario is a period of instability during which the command and control chain of the nuclear arsenal is uncertain. A North Korea in internal crisis with nuclear warheads whose launch authority is unclear represents the most direct threat to the security of Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington. This is precisely the scenario that Beijing is working to prevent by cultivating its contacts within the Party apparatus.

Here is the uncomfortable truth this dossier forces us to confront: Beijing and Washington may share a common interest in the stability of the North Korean succession — even if their long-term visions for the Korean Peninsula are radically different. This paradox has no elegant solution. But it could be, in retrospect, the only space for pragmatic cooperation in an otherwise deeply adversarial Sino-American relationship.

Seoul and Tokyo facing a permanent nuclear neighbor

For South Korea and Japan, the de facto recognition of North Korean nuclear status — and the shift in China's position toward tacit acceptance — imposes a major strategic reformulation. Seoul has been discussing for several years the possibility of developing its own nuclear capabilities — a historic taboo in Korean politics that has become the subject of increasingly open public debate. Polls show that a majority of South Koreans now support the idea of national nuclear deterrence, in the face of what is perceived as a growing threat from Pyongyang and an American security guarantee made less certain by a Trump presidency.

Japan reconfigures its defense despite its anti-nuclear heritage

Japan is officially anti-nuclear — the only country in the world to have suffered two atomic bombings. But even Tokyo has radically reformulated its security policy since 2022: a massive increase in the defense budget, acquisition of long-range strike missiles, expanded defense cooperation with the United States and Australia. The combined threat of China and North Korea — in a context where Russia is feeding the North Korean arsenal — is reshaping in real time the security architecture of East Asia.

I think about what a citizen of Seoul feels reading that North Korea has delivered a million shells to Russia, that China has tacitly accepted its nuclear status, and that Trump is questioning the automaticity of American security guarantees. This is a vertiginous security equation. What the West calls "Indo-Pacific strategy," the people of Seoul call "how to survive tomorrow." And that difference in perspective must inform our policy.

From denuclearization to nuclear risk management

One of the most direct recommendations emerging from the KEIA and CSIS analyses in June 2026: the United States and its allies must abandon denuclearization as a short- to medium-term operational objective and replace it with a policy of nuclear risk management in East Asia. This means strengthening extended deterrence — American nuclear guarantees toward South Korea and Japan — modernizing joint military exercises, and investing in missile defense capabilities across the region.

The difficult conversation with Beijing on shared risk management

This also requires a difficult conversation with Beijing: is China prepared to cooperate on nuclear risk management in East Asia, even if it no longer actively supports denuclearization? This conversation is not impossible — both great powers share a common interest in preventing accidental or unauthorized use of the North Korean nuclear arsenal. But it requires a frankness that current diplomacy, marked by deep mutual mistrust, has not yet achieved.

I am not naive about Sino-American cooperation in 2026. The tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea, semiconductors, cooperation with Russia — the list is long and the positions are hardened. But nuclear weapons have always created spaces of pragmatism even between adversaries. The Cold War demonstrated that. The stakes here are serious enough to attempt the conversation.

What Pyongyang brings back from the Ukrainian front

The North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia and Ukraine are not returning empty-handed. They return with combat experience that Pyongyang cannot acquire anywhere else — exposure to modernized drones, advanced electronic warfare systems, high-intensity artillery tactics, and the reality of a stabilized front with massive casualties. These operational lessons directly enrich the capabilities of the Korean People's Army. A Kim Jong-un — or his successor — who commands an army that has tested its capacities under real conditions in Europe is a more dangerous actor for its neighbors.

Space technology and missiles: the price Moscow offers Pyongyang

In exchange for this battlefield access, Russia has provided North Korea with advanced military technologies that Pyongyang needed for its missile program and potentially for its space weapons program. The reconnaissance satellite MALLIGYONG-1, launched in November 2023, was placed into orbit with Russian technical assistance. This technological cooperation, which directly circumvents the international sanctions blocked at the Security Council by Russia itself, is a concrete illustration of what the Russian-North Korean rapprochement means on the ground.

Here is what should give us pause: North Korea is training its soldiers in Ukraine, Russia is supplying advanced missile technologies, and the two countries are jointly blocking the UN sanctions committee supposed to monitor them. The non-proliferation architecture built after the Cold War is no longer functioning — it is being actively dismantled from the inside by two permanent members of the Security Council. This is not a potential crisis. It is the current reality.

Avoiding the mistakes of the "strategic patience" policy

American policy toward North Korea was for years defined by what the Obama administration called "strategic patience" — waiting for the regime to collapse or change under the pressure of sanctions. That policy failed. During the years of "strategic patience," North Korea multiplied the number of its warheads, perfected its intercontinental ballistic missiles, and stockpiled enough ammunition to fuel a major war. Patience had a measurable cost in North Korean military capacity.

From patience to action: building a realistic deterrence architecture

The West cannot repeat that mistake. The recommendation from KEIA and CSIS experts: engage actively with regional allies — South Korea, Japan, Australia — to build a deterrence and crisis management architecture adapted to the reality of a permanent nuclear North Korea, in a context where China has abandoned the denuclearization-broker role it once claimed to play. This is a difficult reality. It is the only honest one.

Strategic patience lasted fifteen years. During those fifteen years, Kim Jong-un tested dozens of missiles, detonated six nuclear bombs, and obtained ICBMs capable of reaching Chicago. That is not a success record. If anyone proposes a new version of strategic patience wrapped in a new name, ask what has changed. If the answer is not convincing, it is because it is not.

The limits of information on Pyongyang

It is important to name the limits of what we know about Chinese influence strategies toward North Korean Party cadres. The KEIA analyses rest on diplomatic and intelligence sources whose full transparency is not publicly available. North Korea is one of the most opaque regimes in the world — information about the internal dynamics of the Korean Workers' Party is fragmentary, sometimes contradictory, sometimes deliberately fabricated by the regime itself to create disinformation.

The accessible facts that point in a clear direction

What we know with greater certainty: the official readouts of Xi-Kim summits no longer mention denuclearization. North Korean soldiers fought in Russia. China did not use its influence to end that deployment. Blockades at the Security Council on North Korean sanctions were exercised by Russia with Chinese abstention or support. These facts, even without access to Party inner circles, point clearly in the direction of Chinese policy toward North Korea.

I return to the limits. This dossier is the most uncertain of all the ones I cover. I have no source in Pyongyang. No one really does, except for a few rare defectors whose testimonies are valuable but necessarily partial. What I offer here is a synthesis of serious analyses based on accessible facts. The areas of uncertainty I name are not a weakness of this article — they are the honest contours of what is knowable.

Telling the truth to build better policy

Openly declaring that the denuclearization of North Korea is not a realistic short- or medium-term objective is politically difficult for the American, South Korean, and Japanese governments. It means acknowledging a decades-long foreign policy failure. It could be interpreted as an implicit authorization for other countries' nuclear programs. And it complicates campaign messaging and official positions.

The cost of the collective illusion on denuclearization

But collectively lying about the reality of an active nuclear threat carries an even higher cost. It blocks real investment decisions in deterrence and missile defense capabilities. It distorts conversations with regional allies. And it cedes the ground of facts to those — like China — who have adjusted their policy to reality without officially saying so. The Conversation, in its June 2026 analysis, states this conclusion without ambiguity: international efforts to end the North Korean nuclear weapons program have failed. The next step is to draw the political consequences.

I know that naming a foreign policy failure does not make one popular. But there is a form of respect for the public in saying: we tried, it did not work, here is what reality now requires. This honesty is the condition for a foreign policy that can still make things better in the real margins where action is possible.

The interdependence of crises within the CRINK system

There is a direct connection between the post-Kim Jong-un succession and the war in Ukraine that is not named clearly enough: if a power transition in Pyongyang creates internal instability in North Korea, the ammunition deliveries and troop deployments to Russia could be interrupted — or, conversely, a new regime might decide to deepen that cooperation further to buy the loyalty of the military. In either case, Ukraine would be directly affected.

Ukraine at the center of the Asian-European crisis interdependence

This interdependence illustrates the systemic nature of the threat facing democracies: the crises in East Asia and the crises in Eastern Europe are not separate problems to be managed in silos. They feed each other, through arms flows, diplomatic partnerships, and the strategic calculations of members of the CRINK axis. The future of a post-Kim North Korea is therefore also a question of European security — and governments that treat these files separately are giving themselves an illusion of control they do not have.

I do not want to end on a note of despair. Because the CRINK system, despite its real operational convergence, has fracture lines. China's and Russia's interests in North Korea are not identical. The North Korean succession can create tensions within this axis as much as it creates opportunities. A West that understands these dynamics has leverage. A West that ignores them has none.

How to rebuild a realistic security architecture in East Asia

The de facto recognition of North Korean nuclear status compels regional allies to build a new security architecture — not based on the hope of denuclearization, but on managing a durable nuclear reality. This architecture requires three complementary pillars. First, strengthening extended deterrence: American nuclear guarantees toward South Korea and Japan must be made more credible, more visible, and better integrated into ground-level military postures. Joint military exercises, rotations of nuclear submarines in the region, and regular consultations on nuclear planning move in this direction.

Second, strengthening missile defense systems across the region: Seoul, Tokyo, and American bases in the Asia-Pacific are exposed to North Korean ballistic missiles of growing range. Investment in systems like THAAD, Patriot, and their successors is an operational necessity, not a symbolic choice. Third, coordination with China on crisis management in the event of an unstable succession in Pyongyang — a minimal communication channel that can exist even within a context of intense geopolitical rivalry, because both parties share a common interest in preventing unauthorized use of the North Korean nuclear arsenal.

The key role of democratic solidarity between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington

The solidarity between South Korea, Japan, and the United States is the backbone of any credible response to the North Korean threat. That solidarity has sometimes been weakened by historical disputes between Seoul and Tokyo — grievances over Second World War crimes that, while legitimate in their substance, have sometimes been exploited politically at the expense of security cooperation. The governments of all three countries have made significant progress in normalizing their military and intelligence cooperation since 2022, under pressure from their shared threat. That work must be sustained and deepened.

The Trump presidency has created additional uncertainty about the reliability of American engagement in the region — an uncertainty that Beijing and Pyongyang are actively exploiting. The response to that uncertainty is not to panic — it is to make the alliances robust enough to withstand variations in American engagement. Alliances that do not depend on a single person in the White House, but on institutions, treaties, and operational cooperations that have their own momentum. This is a long-term objective — and its construction begins now.

The facts, their limits, and the necessity of naming them

This article does not claim to have all the answers on the North Korean succession, on the precise intentions of Beijing, or on the future behavior of Kim Jong-un. What it does assert with certainty: the official readouts of Xi-Kim summits have stopped mentioning denuclearization — documented fact. North Korean soldiers have fought in Russia — documented fact. China is intensifying its contacts with North Korean Party cadres in anticipation of a transition — serious analysis based on KEIA sources. Experts conclude that denuclearization efforts have failed — growing consensus within the analyst community.

The gap between what experts know and what leaders say

These assembled facts form a picture that the official policies of Western governments do not yet fully reflect. There is a gap between what experts know and what leaders say in public. Naming that gap is one of the most useful things that commentary can do. It is not alarmist. It is honest. And in this file, honesty is the precondition of any policy that can still make a difference.

I will be direct: I write this article because I believe post-Kim North Korea is one of the most undervalued areas of strategic uncertainty in the Western public debate. There is much discussion of China, Russia, Ukraine. There is little discussion of what is happening in Pyongyang — probably because it is opaque and difficult. But opacity is not a reason to avoid preparing. It is an additional reason to do so.

Preparing for post-Kim: what democracies can do now

The central recommendation this dossier imposes is simple in principle, difficult in execution: the United States, South Korea, Japan, and their partners must prepare response scenarios for a power transition in North Korea — now, not when the crisis erupts. This preparation involves crisis communication mechanisms, protocols for managing nuclear instability, humanitarian aid plans for potential refugees, and communication channels with China on joint emergency management.

This preparation must also be intellectually honest about what it cannot control. The succession of power in Pyongyang will be decided by North Korean actors, in opacity, according to internal rules that the outside world does not master. China will have limited influence. The United States, even less. What democracies can control is their own strategic coherence, the solidity of their regional alliances, and the credibility of their nuclear deterrence. That is not nothing. In a world of uncertainties, it is a great deal.

I close this testimony with a thought for North Koreans — the ordinary people of Pyongyang, Hamhung, the labor camps we speak about too rarely. The post-Kim succession is not only a strategic question for Washington and Seoul. It is a question of life and death for 26 million people living under a regime that deprives them of everything. Their freedom is no less important than our security. And ideally, the two go together.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

Secondary source families: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.