Don’t know if this is some bizarro-world Kim Jong Il gamesmanship, or one fruitcake guard. If the latter, odds are he’s already been put up against the wall and shot.
I would have put this in IMHO or GD if I thought there was enough actual information to do anything more than pure speculation. I do wonder if there are NSA phone or radio intercepts from NK discussing the incident.
One would think the NK guards had some kind of basic instructions like, “Don’t shoot at the people who ship in all our food.”
The West overestimates the power of the Chinese to control North Korea, and underestimates that China understands fully how crazy/reckless Kim Jon-il is.
Seriously, there is such a misperception that N Korea is China’s lapdog and Kim Jong-il a puppet on strings. The Chinese think Kim Jong-il in a nutjob and don’t want to get sucked into fixing NK (especially since they probably wouldn’t be allowed to keep NK in this day and age).
More to the point, they couldn’t afford to keep North Korea in this day and age, at least if the rest of the world was watching and was willing to do things if they decided to kill most of the people. Taking and keeping North Korea would mean putting most of the country on the welfare state equivalent of intensive life support, de-DPRK-ifying all of the leadership classes, and figuring out how to rule people with no tradition of modern civil society in a way that doesn’t lead to external sanctions.
Also, there’s some possibility elements of the military would go into the hills and wage a guerrilla war in the name of Juche and kicking out the imperialist monsters.
You’re probably right that China doesn’t want to be stuck with NK, but I don’t think anyone would or could “not allow” China to ‘keep’ NK. Frankly, I think the whole western world, and probably Japan too, would breathe a huge sigh of relief if China put lil Kim in a box and made NK some kind of ‘protectorate’.
Well, China Guy, I’m a bit surprised but relieved to know that, secretly, the Chinese know that North Korea is a dangerous mess. But that is NOT the way they’ve portrayed the situation to the rest of the world.
I’d be delighted if China’s leaders were telling US diplomats privately, “Look, we KNOW Kim Jong-il is a dangerous fruitcake, but what do you expect us to do about it? We can’t control him any more than you can, and if we put pressure on him, he may do something REALLY crazy!”
Instead, China has been pretending for a long time that they control North Korea, and have acted as if they’re in the driver’s seat.
I highly suspect that this is the situation. Then the China leadership plays up to their domestic audience. Sure, that comes off wierd in the West, but what do you expect?
Derlith, I expect China wouldn’t mind adding North Korea and a cheap labor force to the fold. China does have experience since only about 30 years ago most of China was about like N Korea today.
That said, I suspect S Korea would not be willing for China to absorb N Korea even if the rest of the world agreed just to be freed of the mess.