Toppling Kim Jong-un 'could easily make North Korea worse'

Leading academics have claimed that an attempt to topple Kim Jong-Un’s regime in North Korea could potentially make the situation in the hermit state even worse.

Earlier this week, the U.S. military confirmed that it had conducted a missile test over the Pacific Ocean. It was a direct response to Pyongyang’s latest provocation – firing a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan.

But as tensions continue to mount between the two countries, experts at the US-Korea institute of John Hopkins University have warned that a regime change could actually worsen the situation.

A new report warned: ‘The fact is very little is known about the handful of regime insiders in the military, intelligence and security establishments who would fill the vacuum left by Kim’s departure.

‘There is no reason to think a replacement would be easier to work with; it could easily be worse, more virulently anti-American, more prone to provocative action and less adept than Kim Jong Un has been so far at dancing on the cliff’s edge.

‘In fact, in most historical cases of regime change, the relationship between the intervening country and the new regime does not improve.’

The report also warned of wider consequences for the whole Korean Peninsula – with South Korea at threat of nuclear attack in the event of a coup.

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‘Even more worrisome, units in control of these weapons, assuming that the United States and South Korea were behind the attack on their country’s leadership, could retaliate by launching NBC attacks on the South, triggering a larger-scale conflict that would engulf the entire peninsula’, the report stated.

It has also recently been claimed that North Korea tried to directly attack Japan, with the missile landing extremely close to an island off the west coast.