FP: What about Kim’s sons? Might one of them just take over?

KG: I believe that is a much more distant possibility. His sons have not been groomed or designated to be the heir, which suggests that it would be very difficult for them to easily step into the role of the supreme leader. More likely, they would be a figurehead for much more powerful figures behind the scenes. Kim Jong-nam has, by all reports, not been in North Korea very often over the last several years since he was kicked out of Japan. As the first son, he would be the one we’d expect to be the heir apparent. But it’s very difficult to build a patronage system and maintain alliances within the regime if you’re outside of it.

The other two sons, Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un, are both in their 20s. Kim Jong Il started being groomed as successor in 1963 when he started to accompany his father on military guidance inspection tours. He became the heir apparent in the early 1980s and replaced Kim Il Sung in 1994 upon his father’s death. So, that was a 30-year period of preparing to become the successor, and none of the sons has had that sort of experience.

FP: What about the military? Some analysts have suggested that a military strongman might take charge.

KG: There are a few individuals inside the regime who meet the criteria for becoming a military strongman: someone who would have access to the resources to secure power, access to command-and-control links within the regime, and early knowledge of Kim’s incapacitation or death so that he can move quickly against possible opponents.

Such people would be O Kuk-yol, who as I mentioned is the head of the operations department of the party. Or somebody like Kim Myong-kuk, who is the chief of the operation bureau of the general staff and would be in a position to control critical communications nodes within Pyongyang as far as the military goes. He held that position in 1994 when Kim Il Sung died and would be familiar with the procedures that might surround a succession crisis.

FP: There’s another scenario, wherein there’s no central leadership and you have chaos.

KG: Various things could spin out of a succession crisis. You could have a collapse of the regime. It could be either an immediate collapse along the lines of what we saw in Romania, although you need to be very careful not to draw too strong parallels between those two cases. Or it could be a slow-motion collapse, where you have a regime that takes over and is much weaker. The fact that there is more movement within the population because of the economic crises and the increased information coming into the regime could cause it to be very unstable. A weaker regime may be unable to deal with that and eventually collapse.

A succession crisis could also lead to warlordism within North Korea as provincial leaders seek to carve out areas of control, and they may have access to weapons of mass destruction. This could possibly lead to a civil war within the regime that could be very destabilizing. If this regime implodes and collapses, having some sort of soft landing, where you would have an eventual reunification, could get really complicated.

Ken E. Gause is senior analyst at CNA, a nonprofit think tank in Alexandria, Va., director of its Foreign Leadership Studies Program, and author of the recent paper “Can the North Korean Regime Survive Kim Jong Il?” in the Korean Journal of Defense Analysis.