I recognize this is extremely far-fetched, but it was fun to write.
2015: Kim Jong-un dies of a massive heart attack. Let’s call his successor Kim the Fourth. Kim IV is highly intelligent, charismatic, ruthless and extremely ambitious. He vows to reunify the Korean peninsula at all costs.
2016: Islamic State forces storm Damascus and Assad flees to Moscow. ISIS bombings at Shiite mosques and oil pipelines inside Saudi Arabia becomes increasingly frequent. The Revolutionary Guard occupies southern Iraq to create a buffer zone between Iran and the ISIS hordes.
Already feeling besieged, the king of Saudi Arabia declares that Iranian forces on his border is the last straw. He coerces the Pakistanis into selling the Kingdom five nuclear weapons. This deal is done publically and without America’s consent. The Iranian nuclear program immediately goes into overdrive…
Meanwhile, Kim IV quietly bides his time. He does not wish to antagonize the United States with atomic tests or draw attention to himself with elaborate military exercises. He simply waits patiently for the opportune moment…
2018: The Islamic State’s expansion and Saudi acquisition of nuclear weapons has ignited the Middle Eastern tinderbox into full-blown regional war. As a result, oil production plummets. Not only is ISIS torching oil fields all across southern Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but the Iranians have also heavily mined the Straits of Hormuz while Houthi rebels block the Bab-el-Mandeb. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers are deployed to the region to defend Israel and help combat both ISIS and Iran (and keep the oil flowing, of course).
As revenge for arming the Saudis with nuclear bombs, the Iranians have begun fomenting unrest within Pakistani’s Shia populations. Over time a civil war breaks out and the government in Islamabad begins a slow-motion collapse. In the chaos a mad Pakistani general goes rogue and fires a nuclear missile at New Delhi. The Indians immediately retaliate by nuking Karachi. Nuclear missiles start flying across the Indo-Pakistani border, and within one week 20 million people are dead. Over the next few months the urban firestorms loft millions of tons of soot high into the atmosphere, triggering a mild nuclear winter and devastating rice and wheat yields across southern and eastern Asia. Being used to famine and hardship, the North Koreans are prepared to endure better than most.
2020: The oil crisis caused by the Great Middle Eastern War and the worldwide food shortages sparked by the Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange was a calamity for the global economy, initiating a severe depression far surpassing the one in the 1930s. A war-weary American public elects Rand Paul to be their next president. President Paul immediately begins closing foreign military bases, and the US retreats into isolationism to lick its wounds. Russia has exhausted its coffers fighting bloody insurgencies in Ukraine and Chechnya, and Putin is eventually deposed in a palace coup. Russia enters into a period of entrenched political instability and social unrest, during which the Far East secedes to become the Siberian Socialist Republic. China is hit hard by catastrophic famines that lead to enormous social convulsions. Eventually an Occupy-esque movement spreads from Hong Kong to the mainland, climaxing with almost a million people protesting at a giant barricaded tent city inside Tiananmen Square. Already severely weakened, the Communist Party falls and China fragments as Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Macao, Hong Kong, Manchuria and Xinjiang all rush to achieve independence.
2022: The chaos of 2020 marked the end of the post-WWII international order and economic globalization. What replaces it is much more messy and multipolar. The Americans have abandoned their role as the world’s police, with the US essentially becoming an isolationist country. The Americans leave a tiny token force to defend the DMZ. Modern-day Russia is limited to territory west of the Urals, while China hardly even qualifies as a regional power anymore.
With America, China and Russia all but out-of-the-picture, Kim IV knows his time has come and finally launches a massive surprise attack on an unsuspecting South Korea - artillery batteries fire on Seoul while a million troops storm across the DMZ like army ants. President Paul supplies the South Korean with weapons and intelligence but refuses to deploy any boots-on-the-ground. Without American troops, the South Koreans are unable to repel the invaders, and are forced to surrender within a month.
2030: The Democratic Federal Republic of Korea controls the entire peninsula. Kim IV didn’t have an easy time absorbing the South – it required a series of nasty purges to rid the country of intellectuals, capitalists and dissidents. Every South Korean citizen was forced to undergo a strict reeducation program, with varying degrees of success. Those who resisted were sent to one of the dozens of industrial-scale prison camps that had sprung up around the country. The North Koreans perfect the art of brainwashing, and coupled with an Orwellian surveillance system and a ubiquitous secret police Kim IV is able to retain absolute control over the populace.
In a bizarre twist of fate, the combination of the North’s military strength and the South’s economic might make the DFRK a force to be reckoned with. Their economy was among the few in East Asia left relatively unscathed by the Second Great Depression. They grow rich exporting crops and manufactured goods (but most of the profits are directed into increased militarization and giant monuments in Pyongyang). When Kim IV decides to annex Manchuria to provide a bit of lebensraum, there’s no one who can stop him.
2045: Kim IV didn’t stop at Manchuria. Over the years he leads his massive military in a series of conquests as he carves out an East Asian empire. The Korean Empire’s technology is an odd mix of mass slave labor and 20th century hardware, all powered by nuclear power plants. Tens of thousands of North Korean settlers are streaming to Manchuria and Siberia every year. But then Kim IV dies unexpectedly, and is succeeded by the petulant, spoiled Kim the Fifth. Kim V isn’t nearly as clever as his predecessor and quickly drains the imperial treasury throwing lavish parties and constructing a gargantuan opulent palace for himself. He’s quietly overthrown in a coup orchestrated by his top generals. The generals form a triumvirate and attempt to solidify control over DFRK, but without a Supreme Leader the short-lived Korean Empire falls apart. The generals divide the empire amongst themselves - essentially forming warlord kingdoms. Over the next few decades these three kingdoms establish heredity dynasties of their own and struggle with each other for dominance of the region.
