Let us be clear — Beijing bankrolled this monster.
As Kim Jong-un continues his bellicose bluster, now having moved a second missile to North Korea’s east coast, we cannot forget: it’s the Middle Kingdom that has for decades funded Pyongyang’s armies and kept this cruelest of regimes afloat.
Forget Kim’s crankiness. North Korea is one of the most gruesome, warped dictatorships the world has ever seen. It’s estimated that is has up to a quarter of a million political prisoners, in gulags that are probably beyond human comprehension. When I worked as a journalist in Asia, news would filter through, now and then, of unspeakable acts done in the concentration camps, especially to women and even children. Last year my colleague David Blackburn had a harrowing interview with a North Korea escapee who was so brainwashed he had betrayed his mother’s own plans for freedom to the DPRK authorities. And this escapee is one of the lucky ones.
China is North Korea’s largest trading partner, providing half of the nation’s imports. You’d hope that Beijing, with its new wealth, might be prioritising Bangladesh or Syria in terms of economic assistance, but it’s estimated that about half of its foreign aid goes to Pyongyang. China has been North Korea’s main — if not sole — military ally for over 50 years. In 2009, Hu Jintao and Kim Jong-il chummily declared a ‘year of China-DPRK friendship’.
Now, according to news reports, China wants to ‘shift position’ on North Korea because it perceives that things have gone ‘too far’. You might think the building of North Korea’s first torture camp may have been too far, but clearly it’s only too far when millions of traumatised refugees could clamour at your shores.
There are two things that China could do now, and both seem to be in its favour. One is to use its diplomatic leverage to cool down Kim’s antics. The other is to do nothing, while the Americans stretch and indebt themselves further.
If China does indeed help broker an entente, the world will regard it not as swooping down to save the day, but as cleaning up its inhuman mess.
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