Report AdvertisementWe do not know what will happen on the Korean peninsula if Kim Jong-un should die suddenly, but we do know that the American response will be hampered by erratic executive leadership, intense political partisanship, a contracting economy, an antagonistic relationship with China, and a strained relationship with South Korea. For all these reasons, the United States is in its weakest position in decades to handle such a crisis.
David Fields is the author of Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea and the editor of The Diary of Syngman Rhee, 1904–34, 1944, published by the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History. Fields is currently the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.