Koreans are one of the recognized ethnic groups of China, and there are plenty of ethnic Koreans who are Chinese in good standing and have been for hundreds of years. They’re mostly in Jilin province, on the border, but you can find them here and there everywhere; they’ve found themselves suddenly quite fashionable since the Korean Wave swept Asia.
A lot of them are hairdressers, for some reason…
That’s not an open border. It’s a cash cow for the North’s government. And it’s also a potential group of South Korean hostages.
Cut, don’t answer. Same old same old.
Is it being answered?
I was surprised while I was walking into the Wal-mart near my apartment in Maoming, China when I heard someone speaking Korean. I stopped in my tracks, turned around and saw a guy talking on his cellphone. Apparently, he was calling family back in Jilin Province.
I lived in South Korea from 1977 to 1979 and 2005 to 2012. I don’t recall a single one of the refugees from the North being commissioned into the ROK military.
I don’t remember that being reported in the SK news article I saw - I have no idea how they test, and I don’t have privy to that number, so I can’t call.
Just on a wild guess: the North would at least give the little red lamp a glance if unidentified beeps started coming across their radar screens
They get the PR buy taking a humanitarian line off the hook; their populace may not even know that military lines exist and would therefore not care; the leader ship would risk war by cutting the military - would they do that if there were no political gain from doing so?
The South news mentioned the military line; the North mentioned only the Red Cross.
Yi Ung-pyong. He’s mentioned in both the book I mentioned before, and in North of the DMZ, by Andrei Lankov - which also mentions that the 1962 law had such a provision, though it no longer does.
Here’s a thought. Tell China (and sign a pact to the effect) that if NK collapses and Korea unifies, that the US will not station troops anywhere in the former NK territory. China relaxes and lets the renegade NK government collapse. \Peace dividend ensues.
China has business relations with SK and in principle wouldn’t have trouble with them as a direct neighbor, it’s the US troops and equipment that gets their “knickers in a twist”.
Can you find a good link to that person? I tried, but got a lot of irrelevant stuff.
Oh, if anyone’s interested, here is some good reading I just saw a few minutes ago: Why China Still Supports ‘Little Brother’ North Korea.
Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. It was likely true in the 1950s but today, it has nothing to do with the facts on the ground. China simply doesn’t want any change in the situation. It’s not the American presence that they’re concerned about, it’s the presence–or, more accurately, the possible lack of presence–of North Korean’s current government.
I think it’s more the thought of millions of impoverished, emaciated North Koreans streaming into China that has them worried.
I’m afraid I don’t have any such information; all I’ve got are two books, both of which are several years old. But I recommend them highly as pleasure-reads.