This weekend’s report that the United States and South Korea have drawn up plans for the collapse of the North Korean regime is misleading in one sense — OPLAN 5029 has existed for years; what has changed is the reality of American military commitments elsewhere, the deepening misery of North Korea, the profound difficulty of any occupation, and the belated realization of the South Koreans that planning cannot be delayed any longer. The realization takes on new urgency with the obvious decline of Kim Jong Il’s health, but its impetus is the end of ten years of leftist rule in the South, and with it, the end of a head-in-the-sand approach to the Kim Dynasty’s failings, crimes, and fundamental instability.

(The week’s juiciest rumor has it, incidentally, that it was actually Kim Jong Il’s double who greeted Bill Clinton in Pyongyang in August.)

OPLAN 5029 first was written during the Cold War, before North Korea descended into economic and social collapse. By the late 1990’s, the Soviet bloc had collapsed and ceased to sustain North Korea with aid, resulting in economic collapse, a famine that may have killed 2.5 North Koreans (or 10 percent of the total population), and the destruction of much of the economic and social fabric of North Korea outside privileged Pyongyang.

Our contingency plans were obviously due for an update even before the beginning of major U.S. military commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet in 2005, leftist former President Roh Moo Hyun, who leapt to his death earlier this year, ended South Korea’s participation in 5029 planning out of fear that he’d give offense to the very people who reduced North Korea to a sooty, barren, diseased prison. Thankfully, South Korea’s current President, Lee Myung Bak, ordered his general staff to update 5029 shortly after he took office in 2008. Even so, it seems doubtful that America and South Korea have the combined will and manpower to stabilize and rebuild North Korea alone. Much of North Korea’s population outside of Pyongyang is chronically malnourished, psychologically traumatized, diseased, or stoned on crystal meth. Many of its women, denied other means of survival, have turned to prostitution. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children languish in a network of concentration camps.

If I haven’t discouraged you enough about what the 2nd Infantry Division would find on the other side of the DMZ, then perhaps Robert Kaplan’s analysis of what we face can. I also recommend Captain Jonathon Stafford’s article in the February 2008 edition of Military Review (here, link opens in pdf).

Who can restore civilization to such a place? The occupation and reconstruction of two failed states at a time may be all America can undertake. Yet in the increasingly unlikely event of a North Korean invasion, South Korea expects half a million U.S. troops to arrive. If that sounds unrealistic, it is. South Korea, unencumbered by any militarily significant contributions in Iraq or Afghanistan, would also face great difficulty pacifying the North if segments of the North Korean population or military opposed them. According to this 2006 RAND Corporation study, South Korea would need to commit as many as 440,000 troops to North Korea to stabilize it in the event of a civil war or insurgency, out of a total strength at that time of 685,000 (and at that time, Roh’s government had just announced plans to cut military spending and strength).

China, which has spend the last two decades sustaining Kim Jong Il’s misrule, probably views the prospect of an occupation of North Korea with a mixture of greed and dismay. The Chinese like North Korea’s minerals and its seaports, but aside from Sheyang’s brothel patrons, they have little use for its people. When it fears that refugees may surge across the border, China periodically increases troop strength in the area.

Yet persistent reports have it that in the event the North Korean regime collapses, the Red hordes will move in and establish the Outer Chosen Autonomous Zone or somesuch. China’s newly revisionist view of ancient Korean history has stirred fears in South Korea that China is preparing to claim that North Korea is, like Tibet and Xinjiang, historically a part of China. China promises to ”cooperate” with the West in the event of an “emergency” in the North, but admits that it might move into North Korea to “restore order,” or for strictly humanitarian reasons, of course (they’re such humanitarians, the rulers of today’s China). A Financial Times editorial calling for contingency planning notably includes China in the states to be involved joint contingency planning, but this wrongly assumes that China means us well and shares our interests in the region. It won’t participate in a spirit of cooperation or collegiality, and it will probably do its utmost to frustrate the goal of a unified and democratic Korea. But China doesn’t want war any more than we do, which should be an incentive for our diplomats to reach some quiet understandings about minimizing foreign intervention. After all, determined U.S. and South Korean opposition could fan much North Korean discontent against a Chinese occupation. The converse is also true.

An uncoordinated invasion of the North from multiple directions presents grave risks for all involved. There is the obvious potential for conflict among U.S., South Korean, and Chinese forces, perhaps aided by opposing factions of the North Korean military. For the Koreans, such an occupation could shatter their only plausible hope for reunification and split their country into a new set of occupation zones. North Koreans have been indoctrinated with nationalist and xenophobic propaganda, particularly against Americans and Japanese, but any foreign occupation creates a grave risk of a popular backlash and raises the risk of instability and conflict.

Where this leaves me is hoping that we are not overlooking the most important part of contingency planning: the North Korean people, whose discontent with the current regime boils despite the state’s efforts to stifle it. There are now 17,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Among these, several thousand could be trained to as judges, administrators, policemen, military officers, and technocrats to assume key positions in a post-Kim Jong Il North Korea, and to lead those North Koreans who will be prepared to accept and assist a new Korean government. Much is left undone in broadcasting and otherwise disseminating information to North Koreans about the benefits of a democratic and capitalist system, and about the corruption of the one they endure now. Given the marginal force levels available to stabilize North Korea, it is difficult to believe that any nation could successfully pacify North Korea without a strong and immediate effort to “deprogram” and win the support of as many North Koreans as possible. That is just as well for another reason: the end of the current North Korean regime is the only plausible solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, and to the humanitarian disaster Kim Jong Il has inflicted on the North Korean people. The solution to all of the problems we face in North Korea begins with a subversive outreach to its people.

Joshua Stanton is an attorney in Washington, D.C.