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| March 24, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|  | The Koreas PYONGYANG WATCH: Red in lips and teeth By Bradley Martin North Korea has moved to improve its relations with China this month, starting with an unprecedented visit by Great Leader Kim Jong-il to the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang and continuing with a lovey-dovey visit by the North Korean foreign minister to Beijing. It is no coincidence that this activity has come in the midst of the escalating Taiwan crisis. The main chance for dominance and long-term survival of a Pyongyang regime beset by horrendous domestic problems is to reduce US resistance to an invasion of South Korea. One way that could happen would be if the US military became so deeply involved in a war elsewhere that it couldn't do a proper job of defending South Korea. A China-US fight over Taiwan could be ideal in that regard, since old allies Beijing and Pyongyang - ''as close as lips and teeth'' - could coordinate timing and other matters to make sure both got the full advantage of subjecting the United States to a two-front war. After a decade of having to draw up its war plans without being able to count on a single communist ally, North Korea would be back in harness with the Chinese communists who helped fight the Americans to a stalemate in the first Korean War. An even better scenario, from Pyongyang's standpoint, would be for the American public to get spooked over the prospect of another bloody war against Asian ''hordes'' and force its politicians to bring the troops home from Asia. The threat of a US-China war over Taiwan might fill the bill here, Pyongyang can hope. To see how, just consider a report last Sunday in the Beijing weekly newspaper Haowangjiao on Beijing's plans to carry a war over Taiwan to the nuclear and neutron-bomb level if necessary. That's a blood-curdling thought even for people ensconced on the other side of the Pacific, since China has been developing a fleet of submarines armed with nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States in case the Americans insist on getting involved. The Pentagon says its nukes are better. But who wants to volunteer to test that claim? Haowangjiao is published by the Chinese military-industrial complex, the merchants of death who design and build - and obviously take great pride in - the gizmos. After the Haowangjiao story went on for a while about weapons of mass destruction and what they would do, it got off this prize line: ''Even though we got a damaged Taiwan, it is better than having no Taiwan at all.'' It's remarkable how bloodthirsty hardline ideologues can be. A neutron bomb, remember, is said to kill all living creatures while leaving the infrastructure standing. Nice suburban homes await their new conquering occupants. All that need be done is dispose of the bodies. This may help to explain why (even if, as may be the case, the leak was authorized in advance) the Beijing authorities have suspended publication of Haowangjiao. The article makes them look Dr Strangelovian, at a time when they're struggling to overcome Taiwan's new, election-engendered advantage in the battle for world opinion. Interestingly, as we reported in an Asia Times article earlier, a colonel in charge of North Korea's biochemical weapons is quoted as having said something almost identical at a meeting of officers in the early 1990s. According to a North Korean military defector who was at the meeting, the colonel said Pyongyang had stockpiled enough biochemical weapons to wipe out every person in South Korea - and ought to do so if the South would not submit and live under the superior system developed by the late Kim Il-sung. (Special to Asia Times Online) | |||||||||
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