If you are talking about China (and I assume you are), they don’t have the worlds largest industrial capacity, the most oil, the most resources, and certainly nothing in the ball park of the most sophisticated weapons in the world (snort).
Nor are they likely to jump in on the side of North Korea, a country that has been a royal pain in their ass for decades now. Even if they wanted to aid North Korea in staying independent (which I seriously doubt is a high priority on the part of the Chinese government at this point), they wouldn’t want to jeopardize their trade markets with either the US, Europe OR the South Korean’s. Not for the likes of Lil’ Kimmy and a country which routinely starved it’s populace to the point where millions of them tried to flee to China to get away.
I believe I was in my late teens – possibly early twenties – when I realized that what I read in novels and saw on televison had little or nothing to do with real life.
Most of it is obviously implausible. However what makes you think China won’t do what I described. I didn’t get the idea from the video game, I was using it as an example.
What pretext would China use to annex the border territories between China and North Korea in the event of a North/South war? Assuming China isn’t part of the actual fighting, how would they justify snagging North Korean territory in the event of a full on North Korean collapse and annexation by the South? It would cause a real stink, both with the new unified Korean government and with the US (and possibly Europe too, though gods know how they’d jump on something like this) and possibly with Japan too (though, again, it’s hard to say). I can’t see Obama et al just letting something like this pass, depending on how American and Korean citizens react (I can practically guarantee you that the Koreans would go nuts if this happened, assuming reunification, and I seriously doubt Americans would be happy about it, especially considering current tensions between China and the US over trade and such).
Because in real life, China doesn’t give a shit any more about North Korea and Kim, except in a pro forma sort of way. Should Korea reunite, China will piss, moan, complain about it for the next 50 years (or maybe, knowing China, the next 1000 years), and sit tightly behind their border. If China wishes to create a buffer zone against a reunited Korea, they will do so behind their border, just as they do with Russia, et al.
I think in real life, China will be attempting to open up new trade routes and markets for their goods, and making deals with the new Korean government on manufacturing transfers, tax breaks for corporations willing to move north to China, and all manner of other things to try and weave the new Koreans more into China’s sphere of influence and away from America’s. That’s what they’ve been doing with Japan and South Korea, while paying lip service to North Korea and trying to keep them on a tight leash (well, and to keep them from starving their population and driving them north into China). I don’t see where China would WANT a ‘buffer zone’, to be honest…it would get in the way of trade and opening up new markets for them.
I’m not saying such an effort would succeed rather China would attempt it. Presumably China would join in the war and get part of North Korea as an occupation zone.
My impression has always been that for merely historical reasons and ego China has been the closest thing to an “ally” that North Korea has, but in practice they’d probably prefer a united Korea with a government similar to the ROK (preferably one less an ally to us than its current incarnation is).
Because really, who the hell wants freaking North Korea on your doorstep, even if it’s your nominal ally? It’s like having a rabid chihuahua as a guard dog.
China isn’t really all that expansionist, though (and, frankly, much of the territory between North Korea and China kind of sucks…plus there are natural boundaries there as well), and I really can’t see them getting involved militarily by jumping on North Korea from the rear…not without really good reasons. For one thing, while a lot of folks on this board seem to think China has a strong and powerful military, the reality is it kind of sucks…it’s big, to be sure, but it’s a ponderous beast, best suited to defense or taking on the likes of superpowers like Tibet. Unless they had a lot of warning, I seriously doubt China could bring enough military force to bear quickly enough to really make inroads into North Korea…not if this supposed theoretical war between the North and South goes the way I think it would. Granted, I haven’t looked deeply into what China may have deployed on the border between North Korea and China, but I doubt it’s in anything remotely like an offensive stance…and I seriously doubt they could stage real offensive forces (or the logistics to support them in North Korea) in any kind of realistic time frame. If this war between the North and South sort of built up, I suppose that if China really DID want to stab the North in the back they COULD move those forces and supplies into the area eventually, but it would sort of be obvious to at least the US and the South…and they would both be asking China why it was doing so. Which means that the North would also be aware of it.
I seriously doubt that China would want to become involved, or that they would go to such effort to create a buffer zone when the reality is they already have one, seeing as how they have had to guard it periodically from incursions from starving North Korean’s and occasionally even North Korean military units in the past. From memory, they already have defenses in place, so I’m not seeing why it would be worth their while to piss off the new Korean government or the US (or possibly Europe and/or Japan) for something they don’t really need.
Not to mention that the only way the US military will ever leave the Korean peninsula is if 1) the US or SK would ever withdraw from the mutual defense treaty (which is highly unlikely, particularly so long as NK is still around) or 2) if there was a united Korean government and thus no NK to protect SK from.
While it would mean handing the US a de facto “win,” the easiest way for China to clear out the US from the area is to undermine and encourage the internal toppling of Kim Jong Il. It seems that one way or another there is going to be a humanitarian/refugee crisis when the Kim Il Jong dynasty finally crumbles. Why not just get it over with at the time of China’s choosing rather than waiting for events to inevitably (and perhaps inconveniently) unfold?
Another major issue is that once the North Koreans invade the south they will see how much better life is there and not want to fight. The entire totalitarian propaganda will collapse when North Koreans are exposed to South Korean information. The same thing supposedly happened when NK sent slaves to do labor in places like the USSR. Once the NK slaves saw how much better life was in the USSR, some started committing crimes in hopes of being sent to a soviet prison.
I have maintained that should the North invade the South, the proper and best response for the South is to start cooking, and leave as much food out for the invading North Koreans as possible. Between the food and the material goods present, the nature of their government’s lies and oppression should become rather obvious.
By seeing how much wealth they have by the number of cars, the size of buildings, the huge numbers of obese people, all the electronics everywhere, etc. Add into that issues like conversations with the locals, access to the media, etc and military discipline will start to crumble in the north.
People in the North are told that the rest of the world is miserable. It will probably take a day of real world experience for the North Koreans to realize that is a lie if they invade the south.
Smuggling VHS tapes into the North from the South is supposedly a big part of breaking down the North’s totalistic propaganda. When Northerners see how much wealth, food, health care, etc. is available in the south based on the VHS tapes they see (which are usually things like soap operas) they realize the governments propaganda is a lie.
Also many northerners have no idea what kind of life Kim Jong Il leads. The rest of the world knows he lives in luxury while millions of N Koreans starve. And if the Northerners invade South Korea, that information will probably end up leaking to them somehow.
An invasion of the south would lead to a mass existential crisis, mutinies and breakdown of discipline.
China is so flush with cash now that, if the NK government collapses, I could see them becoming a major donor to SK unification/rebuilding efforts just so they don’t still have an economic and social basket case on their doorstep.
My pure guess is that what China would like to see, if it were only possible, would be a unified Korean peninsula that’s economically free-market but politically tightly controlled and as completely under China’s thumb as possible. A sort of Hong Kong writ large.
Why hasn’t China intervened in North Korea’s hard-line Stalinist regime by now? You’d think they’d at least encourage reform to the same extent China itself has put Maoism away in the attic. There has to be at least a faction within the North Korean party and military that’s tired of being dirt poor.
China isn’t going to overtly interfere in North Korean affairs. China has built it’s modern reputation on non-interference with the internal affairs of other nations precisely because they are so incredibly sensitive to other nations interfering in what they see as their own internal affairs. My cites for that are; Google, Rio Tinto, the Dalai Lama, Currency Reform, Human Rights. So while they may pressure NK behind the scenes in a limited manner, it is extremely unlikely that they will make overt moves to force change in North Korea.
