Category: China & Korea

For once, I’m mostly in sympathy with North Korea’s position. Chinese fisherman are notorious for invading the territorial waters of their neighbors, the Chinese government may well have grander plans to invade them, and the North Korean people certainly need those fish more than the Chinese do. (Leave aside the question of whether the fish would otherwise be eaten by hungry North Koreans or exported by the regime for hard currency.) The North Koreans have impounded the ship, pending payment of...

The Chinese government has announced that Xi Jinping will visit Seoul next month without having ever visited Pyongyang, a reversal of the usual sequence. Although Asian diplomats place great value on the symbolism of such things, it is also possible to make too much of it. Still, I draw a few inferences from the announcement that may be important. First, the announcement of Xi’s visit would pose significant complications for Pyongyang if it plans to nuke off soon. Xi would feel...

Last week, North Korea unexpectedly announced that Hwang Pyong So had replaced Choe Ryong-Hae as North Korea’s top military officer and number two official. Choe had held this status since the December purge of Jang Song-Thaek. It may be a complete coincidence that Kyodo News has since reported on allegedly leaked contingency plans by the Chinese Army to seal the border and protect North Korean officials from, shall we say, summarized judicial proceedings in the event of a collapse of...

Hope springs eternal.  I said recently that it wouldn’t surprise me to see China temporarily restrict trade with / aid to North Korea to mislead us into thinking that it’s really pressuring North Korea to disarm, thereby slowing the momentum here to legislate what Glyn Davies calls “national” sanctions.  This trick works so well because so many of us so desperately want to believe that China will give us an easy out.  Witness this report, via Korea Real Time, that...

OFK REGULARS KNOW that I view Shen Dingli as the living, breathing embodiment of everything about China’s government that’s maleficent, loathsome, arrogant, and neo-imperialist (to re-expropriate a term from the Marxists).  Shen, a professor of “American studies,” regular visitor to Pyongyang, and frequent contributor to influential publications abroad, often appears to represent the views of his government, which ordinarily spares no effort to censor even the most insignificant weibo. In this murky capacity, Shen publicly green-lighted North Korea’s 2006 nuke test and reacted...