Kim Jong Il was nothing less than an economic catastrophe for North Korea. His political ascent, in fact, tracks almost precisely with that ill-fated nation's shift to economic stagnation and then its frightening free-fall into abject mass misery.

“What happens next?” is not really the question we should be asking. More important is to ask what the United States wants to happen next, and what it can do to bring about that outcome.

With the death of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, understanding the country's succession process is central to divining the future of this anachronistic, frustratingly cryptic, and often deliberately menacing government.

Kim Jong-il's death perforce marks a turning point in modern Korean history. Not since Douglas MacArthur’s push toward the Yalu has the future of the North Korean regime been as uncertain as it is today.

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) and AEI will be launching a new HRNK report entitled, “Marked For Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social Classification System,” which will be discussed at this event. The panel will also examine the extent to which the growing reliance on money and bribery is eroding the songbun system’s influence.

North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, who passed away at the age of 69, has bequeathed a legacy of poverty and starvation to the country's subject population, and a highly uncertain future to his nominal legatees, the Communist royals of his dynastic police state.

The upcoming party conference will decide who will be Kim Jong Il's successor and what direction North Korea will take in order to meet its goals for 2012.