Will China Absorb North Korea?

Gordon Chang discusses the future of North Korea, "There is profound unease in China about Kim-family rule, even though the two nations have maintained ties for decades. In September, the oft-quoted Zhu Feng of Peking University even asserted that the 1961 mutual assistance treaty between China and North Korea had become irrelevant—a dead letter—with the end of the Cold War because China had already abandoned the North. Professor Zhu’s view buttresses the assessment of South Korea’s then vice foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, who is reported to have told then US Ambassador Kathleen Stephens in February 2010 that China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a ‘benign alliance.’”

What we may be looking at with the recent, and mostly meaningless deal with North Korea, is a more important back channel step by China to have North Korea begin to edge in baby Kim steps toward a reality check of what the future will be like. In this, it should be a future in which the regime either goes away totally, or somehow learns to live with its neighbors, including the Chinese, who are weary of the myopic view of the Kim Family Regime in Pyongyang.

Chang's suggestion that the Chinese could, given the provocation that the Northern Generals might slipt into warlords fighting for control of their part of the top of the peninsular, is one of the known scenarios of how the Kim Family Regime will collapse. At that point, the Chinese would have to assume political and military control of the North, a prospect that they probably find incredibly upsetting, considering how far they have come in the world with this dead's man weight around their necks.

How North Korea will collapse, is not the issue, it's when and how, and then, how that failed regime's death throws impact the rest of the region and the alliances that are in place.

Korea, China and the Future - Gordon Chang