Asia Times: Memo from JZ to KJI: Get real, comrade


	September 13, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

Memo from JZ to KJI: Get real, comrade
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Not long ago, to talk of Kim Jong-il's diplomatic diary was an oxymoron. The Dear Leader never went anywhere, and never met foreign leaders. He left all that to the DPRK's titular president Kim Yong-nam, whose post was specifically created to take care of this when the constitution was revised in 1998.

So let no-one say North Korea can't change. In barely 15 months, the artist formerly known as hermit has been twice to China and once (at length) to Russia. At home, he's greeted South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and a European Union troika headed by the Swedish premier. And barely a fortnight after returning from Russia, Kim Jong-il hosted China's leader Jiang Zemin.

North Korea knows how to put on a show, and pulled out all the stops. Citizens lined the streets (a nice change from work, no doubt), and there were the usual mass displays. Formally, it was all smiles. But there was no joint statement, unlike when the Dear Leader went to Moscow. And Jiang stayed just one full day, travel aside. Contrast Kim Jong-il's lengthy peregrinations across Siberia not so long ago.

But then China's president is a busy man. This trip was brought forward to give more time to prepare for serious business, like hosting the next Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. Compared to that, North Korea is a sideshow - and a nuisance. No top Chinese leader had been there for a decade. In 1999, Jiang told a Japanese visitor that he was still waiting to be invited. So when the call finally came, he could hardly refuse.

How different it all once was. China and North Korea used to be genuinely close: "like lips and teeth", in a favorite phrase (which I didn't hear this time). Another is "friendship sealed in blood". Too true. Saving Kim Il-sung's bacon in 1950-53 cost China a million lives; the dead included Mao Anying, Chairman Mao's favorite son. Beijing's reward for this massive sacrifice, which saved the DPRK from extinction, was to be played off against Moscow for decades by the Great Leader. Teeth can bite lips.

The timing of Jiang's trip may reflect fears that Kim Jong-il is playing his dad's game. Until the Dear Leader took that train, Beijing figured it had definitively ousted Moscow for the dubious honor of being North Korea's patron-in-chief. Actually, it had been no contest for a decade, since Mikhail Gorbachev pulled the plug on Kim Il-sung in the final months of the USSR. His frustration at endless slights and unpaid debts was understandable, but Russian diplomats have rued their loss of clout in Pyongyang ever since.

Not that becoming number 1 big brother was a bed of roses for Beijing, either. As ever, North Korea's idea of comradeship was simply to take its overdraft elsewhere. At first China resisted this, and tried to put ties on a business-like footing. Border provinces were angry at Pyongyang's penchant for not paying: corn, coal, you name it. Beijing tried to follow Moscow in charging world market prices - in dollars, up front - for future oil and grain supplies, instead of the old heavily subsidized "friendship" rates.

Needless to say, it didn't work. By the mid-1990s politics once again took priority over business, and subsidies resumed as the DPRK sank into famine. Last year's trade figures give the game away. Out of a total of US$488 million, over 90 percent was imports. China sent goods worth $451 million - and got just $37 million back.

This is aid, not trade. Why do they put up with it? Because North Korea is vital as a buffer state. The nightmare scenario for Beijing is a DPRK collapse, which would risk millions more refugees pouring into Manchuria - and bring the US troops stationed in South Korea right up to China's own borders. Hence the announcement this time of a further gift: 200,000 tons of grain and 30,000 tons of diesel oil.

Outwardly, then, comradeship rules. Unlike Moscow, Beijing has never openly criticized Pyongyang. But the reality is pursed lips and gritted teeth. Off the record, the Chinese now admit what's long been clear: They're as fed up as anyone with this maverick menace. And no wonder. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have both been a big headache for Beijing, destabilizing the region and damaging US-China relations. In particular, the PRC blames the reckless rocket that Kim Jong-il launched across Japan in August 1998 as providing an all too plausible pretext for the US's push for missile defense.

On economics too, Chinese patience is wearing thin. For 20 years, since Deng Xiaoping saw the light and ditched Maoism for market reforms, China has been pressing North Korea to follow suit. Back in 1983, on his first visit to China, Kim Jong-il got the message direct from Deng. Then, the Dear Leader was shocked by the sprigs of capitalism he saw. But after 17 years, when China soared while his realm sank, Kim's business-oriented trip to Shanghai last January raised hopes that he had at last wised up.

Apparently not. Half a year later, there's still no sign of real economic change. For China this is not an abstract issue, but one that grows ever more urgent. A market-oriented North Korea would stand on its own feet, not need endless subsidies. And it would feed its people, so they wouldn't have to flee into China.

The refugee issue is a big headache for Beijing, which fears rising instability in its border areas - and a foreign human rights backlash against its get-tough policy. It wants them stopped at source.

Another twist is that these days China gets on far better with a different Korea - the one it once helped invade. The PRC and ROK only tied the knot in 1992, but relations have developed rapidly across the board: business, politics, even military. At over $30 billion, Sino-South Korean trade is 60 times that with the North. For the future the Korea that counts is the tiger, not the hermit crab.

In the long run Beijing seeks to wean Seoul away from Washington, and wants to see US troops quit the peninsula. Here too, the main obstacle is North Korea's all too convincing performance as a threat. All in all, Jiang Zemin and Kim Jong-il must have had plenty to talk about. Keep smiling, comrades. Just like lips and teeth.

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