North Korea Could Define Chinese Foreign Policy for a Generation
North Korea has grown to become the United States’ most pressing national security issue. North Korea is also called the “hermit kingdom,” meaning that it is almost entirely cut off from the world. Its people essentially worship its leadership as gods, from founder Kim Il Sung to its current “Dear Leader,” grandson Kim Jong Un. Scores of staff members walk with Kim Jong Un with notebooks, ready to write down any profound knowledge that he is willing to share as he walks through manufacturing plants and agricultural facilities. Every household is required to have a picture of Kim Jong Un, and men are only allowed to have government-sanctioned haircuts. It’s people basically have been indoctrinated into never questioning their leaders, ranging from their supervisors to their Juche leadership. They never question the propaganda that the North Korean regime has spent decades broadcasting through its government-controlled media channels. Most truly believe that the United States is chomping at the bit to invade, but the North Korean military are the only stalwart against impending Armageddon.
In contrast, South Korea has grown since the Korean War into a vibrant capitalist and democratic society. Despite current political instability with the impeachment and removal of its former president, Park Geun-Hye. South Korea has grown its own unique culture, which has been exported to the world ranging from “Gangnam Style,” which actually broke Youtube’s viewership counter, to its innovative technologies from Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, the world’s fourth largest automobile manufacturing company. Through black markets, North Koreans illegally import South Korean media, which undermines the narrative that the “Hermit Kingdom” propagates, leading some North Koreans to question their own standard of living in contrast to what they see in South Korean television shows, movies, and music videos.
The North Korean way of governing is simply not sustainable, yet its leaders rule with an absolute iron fist. Dissent is met by imprisonment at harsh labor camps, which some experts put on par with the concentration camps of the Holocaust. Famine is prevalent in the lives of the average North Korean family. From 1994–1998, a major famine that killed as many as 15% of its population according to some estimates, is popularly caused “The Arduous March,” a term coined by the regime that echoes back to Kim Il Sung fighting against the odds against the Japanese Empire. The United States is seen as an ever-present boogeyman, with the capability of eradicating North Korean society and its way of life. The North Korean military is seen as a courageous, brave, and highly disciplined force capable of defeating any foe, despite the fact that their technology is stuck in the 1960s. The North Korean regime has created a rigid, authoritarian, unquestioning culture to consolidate its rule. The centerpiece of that is its antagonism against the United States.
Any perceived provocation by the United States or its regional allies is immediately met with an existential threat — that the United States will experience its own Armageddon and that its people will live in a “sea of fire.” North Korea does not yet possess the capability to launch a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, but it is learning from every failure. It is starving its own people in the pursuit of this goal, with the belief that securing a capable nuclear force will ensure its own survival. Americans and South Koreans alike often scoff and joke about these threats, viewing them as petulant empty threats from a cartoonish and inept authoritarian power, but it is carefully coordinated propaganda aimed more at its own people than the President of the United States or the U.S. military. The North Korean regime has convinced its people that nuclear weapons are an existential necessity, and that sacrifices must be made, just as were made during the Arduous March in the 1990s. Without nuclear weapons, North Korean leaders do not view the status quo as sustainable, despite the fact that the country is regularly hit by famine and its people regularly live in severe poverty. It looks in particular at Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003 with the belief that Iraq was pursuing its own nuclear weapons, which was found to be false. The North Koreans believe that possessing a nuclear arsenal secures its status on the global stage and secures the existence of the Juche way of life.
North Korea has grown to become the leading cause of instability in the region. China has grown more distant from North Korea, and has hit them where it hurts by banning all North Korean coal imports in late February. China was North Korea’s leading importer of North Korean coal, with 40% of North Korean coal having been exported to China. But China is in a difficult position — -if the One China Policy is the dominant pillar of Chinese foreign policy, avoiding “encirclement” is a close second. Historically, China has had an inferiority complex, and has initiated a foreign policy to prevent foreign incursions that it could not counter.
The beginning of its modern history is defined by The Second Opium War, in which the British Empire forced China to open its ports to trade and establish diplomatic relations with European countries in 1860. Currently, China views North Korea as a bulwark against encirclement. India has warmed its relationship with the United States through trade deals, arms sales, and military collaboration. Vietnam has also improved its relationship with the United States. Last year, President Obama lifted an arms embargo against Vietnam, and entered talks with the Japanese government to discuss military collaboration. Much of South East Asia has become friendly to the United States through trade deals, despite the setback of the abolition of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). With China emerging as a global power, its periphery is increasing its economic and military ties with the United States. China is terrified of the prospect of anti-ballistic missile technologies such as THAAD, which has recently been deployed to South Korea of having a firm pulse of China’s nuclear weapon arsenal, which it views as necessary to secure the One China Policy.
China will soon have to make a decision that could fundamentally undermine over a century of foreign policy — either allow the North Korean peninsula to unify, seize North Korea and establish a pro-China government in pursuit of its anti-encirclement strategy, or work to maintain the status quo. Recent actions by China suggest they are more open to the downfall of the Juche regime. However, China recognizes that the fall of the regime is only the beginning — millions of refugees could flock to the Yalu River, which acts as a natural boundary between the two countries. A historically tragic humanitarian crisis could end up along its Korean border, which could cause its own internal political instability. It may choose to allow South Korea and the United States to bare a majority of the costs and allow the Korean Peninsula to unify under the South Korean government. There are no good options, and maintaining the status quo means the possibility of a nuclear-equipped North Korea threatening not just the region, but its most viable economic partner — the United States. Will China choose to enforce its established strategy of avoiding encirclement by supporting North Korea as a buffer state or will it choose to maintain and grow its economic ties with its largest economic partners such as the United States to provide for its population? From the Chinese perspective, this is an existential question. Will it keep with the past or move in the direction of the future? North Korea is a relic self-imprisoned in the past, and a decision by China to abandon the Juche regime will be a fundamental shift in Chinese foreign policy that may open it up towards becoming a more cooperative, global power, or it could become a point of tension that could define the U.S.-Sino relationship for the next decades to come as China emerges as the world’s largest economy.
China could choose to begin a new “Cold War” with the United States and its allies in the region, choosing to face encirclement by a more militarized foreign policy, investing in its maritime capabilities, air power, and missile technologies. I believe that China will abandon North Korea because China is already being encircled — the United States has a military presence in many Central Asian countries, warming diplomatic, economic, and security ties with India, and South East Asian countries such as Vietnam. The U.S. also has an unshakable alliance with both South Korea and Japan. China will likely view North Korea as an acceptable loss as it faces an inevitable geostrategic reality that cannot be countered simply by continuing support for buffer states, but through strategic economic investment, carefully coordinated diplomacy, trade, and growing the strength of its military.
Some will say that if China chooses to abandon North Korea, that a Cold War is destiny. Encirclement will simply not be tolerated. However, China does not aspire to seize territory as the Soviet Union did. It will not create an “Iron Curtain,” because to feed its economic growth, it needs strong, global economic partnerships to maintain it. Despite being a communist country, its economy is rapidly becoming one of the most capitalist in the world as people move from the rural areas to vibrant cities. It has no interest in conquest or acting as an ideological counter to Western capitalism. It is intereted only in connections that work towards its national interest, which at present, is securing resources for a rapidly growing economy and urbanizing society. China does this by investing in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, China has hundreds of thousands of its citizens in Africa for example, working for state-owned companies that are mining uranium in Mali and copper in Zambia. To grow, China needs to work towards maintaining stability, not disrupting it. Maintaining stability ensures the viability of their current economic partnerships that provide for its rising middle class. However, it remains uncertain how China will face is rapidly growing influence and status as a global heavyweight.
As for North Korea, perhaps after the aftermath of a massive war that could cost millions of lives, they will take their own Arduous March into integrating into South Korea’s economy and culture, and China could import more than just coal, but innovative technologies that change its society and the world. “Hermit kingdom” would be a phrase mentioned only in Korean history books, instead of a matter of fact term about the present. With South Korea facing a political crisis, a bellicose United States, China faced with an emerging geopolitical reality, and the ever-present specter of Kim Jong Un, I believe it is important to act rationally based upon the currently grim reality, while keeping an optimistic idealism of the future.
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