Asked to identify potential hot spots around the world this year, several of the shrewdest commentators put Korea towards the top of their lists. Their choice has been justified by recent events, the latest of which the defection of one of the most, senior North Korean ideologues to South Korea - has excited much political and media attention in Beijing, where he made the move. It puts the Chinese government in a delicate position, caught between older political and newer economic allies. It should alert the world to how volatile the Korean Peninsula could become as the regime in the North totters and the South comes to terms with structural adjustment in its industrial economy and political system.
Mr Hwang Jang Yop has justified his defection by issuing a couple of hand written letters describing how workers and farmers are starving just as the regime; describes their conditions as utopian. He is reported to have been to the fore in arguing the need to accommodate the South and more generally the western powers, if North Korea is to break out of the isolation of which he has been one of the chief ideologues. This may well have antagonised President Kim Jong Il and the armed forces which are the chief buttress of his regime.
His defection must represent a decisive turn in the struggle between those who support him and the hard line forces around the president. If so the world is in for a turbulent period in the region. There have been many signs of great difficulty, including the public acknowledgment of famine conditions and the appeal for international help to deal with it, the agreement with the United States on nuclear facilities and the apology to South Korea over the recent submarine incident in which 24 sailors were killed. If the willingness to admit these setbacks is now to be reversed, it is hard to see how a more intransigent approach could be expressed other than through increased belligerence.
South Korea is not particularly well placed at present to respond with the determination and readiness required. It faces difficult decisions about reorganising industrial and political structures after prolonged growth in which the state played such a large role.
If there is a genuine threat of military confrontation, South Korea will have to rely on United States backing. This would come just at the point when the US is attempting to engage more fully with China in this important year of transition in its affairs. Beijing has recently been encouraging the two Koreas to negotiate peacefully on unification, a prospect that now looks much less likely. It can readily be seen that the East Asian region as a whole could be drawn into a Korean conflict, which is all the more reason for close co operation to prevent it happening.