THUS far, there has been an icy logic to North Korea’s increasingly aggressive demonstrations of its nuclear weapons program and its ability to deliver warheads even as far as the United States. For the Kim Jong-un dictatorship positive proof that it is a nuclear power is its surest defense against attack. The Pyongyang leadership may even fantasize that as the world’s seven nuclear-armed power, it may now be accorded a place as an equal at the highest negotiating tables and may actually be able to force an end to international sanctions.
The constant in the three generations of the Kim family dictatorship has been the benevolence of Beijing. It was China that in 1950 saved grandfather Kim Il-sung’s regime from almost certain defeat in the Korea war, when it sent its troops to push back the US-led advance by United Nations forces. After an armistice, but not a peace, was signed in July 1953 the North returned behind the Demilitarized Zone which runs along the 38th parallel which had been the original frontier separating the country before the North Korean attack three years earlier. At least 2.5 million civilians perished and some 1.5 million soldiers on both sides were killed or missing, to achieve precisely nothing.
With the end to fighting, it was China that helped rebuild the shattered Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north. And it was Chinese goods, technology and fuel that has sustained the country ever since. During the last 20 years it clearly suited Beijing to have the Kim dictatorship pursuing its nuclear ambitions to the increasing discomfiture of Washington and its regional allies, not least the Japanese.
But with last week’s flight of an intercontinental ballistic missile right over Japan and the weekend underground testing of an hydrogen bomb, so close to the border that its substantial shock waves were recorded in neighboring Chinese cities, Pyongyang would seem to have gone too far. Last month China backed increased UN Security Council sanctions. Privately Beijing undoubtedly warned Kim Jong-un to ease off in his provocation, but the chubby little dictator has instead ramped up tensions. Unconcerned with the loss of face to the Chinese president, Sunday’s underground test went ahead as Xi Jingping was hosting Brazilian, Indian, Russian and South African leaders of the so-called Brics nations.
China now has a serious problem. If it cuts essential supplies via the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge across the Yalu River that marks its frontier with North Korea, the country will quickly descend into chaos. Moreover Pyongyang could suddenly become as threatening to Beijing as it is now to everyone else. But it if does not act against Kim Jong-un, US president Donald Trump, unpredictable in almost everything except his bombast, is likely to try and impose US sanctions on any country that continues to trade with North Korea. This would have a catastrophic effect on China and of course by extension on global trade. The results of US military action against Pyongyang would clearly be even more unpredictable and likely disastrous.
The ball is very much in China’s court. It is busy asserting its regional dominance yet that dominance is now being challenged by the Rottweiler North Korean regime it has fed and protected for so long and which seems about to break free of its chain.
