What Would Happen if China Dumped North Korea?

National Interest ^ | December 20, 2017 | Larry Ong, Don Tse

[TigerLikesRooster]

What Would Happen if China Dumped North Korea?



Larry OngDon Tse

December 20, 2017

During their November meeting in Beijing, United States President Donald Trump and General Secretary Xi Jinping stated their commitment to denuclearizing North Korea. Since then, the Trump administration has been sending signals that the U.S. is serious about going into North Korea if the Kim Jong Un regime forces the situation: U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said in an interview that the probability of war with North Korea is “increasing every day.” American F-22 and F-35 fighter jets participated in a large-scale joint military exercise with South Korea. And in a speech to a Washington think-tank, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the U.S. has been talking to China about securing North Korea’s nuclear weapons in the event of regime collapse.


Meanwhile, China appears to be preparing for possible American action against North Korea. An army group from a Chinese theater command in charge of defending the Sino-North Korean boundary held a training exercise in late November. A week later, news emerged that China is constructing refugee camps across the border from North Korea. “We’ve done our best. We can neither persuade North Korea nor America,” read a Dec. 2 editorial by state mouthpiece Global Times. China can only stick to its “bottom line” and “make preparations for the worst,” the editorial continued.

China’s apparent willingness to abandon North Korea makes sense from a realist standpoint. Given North Korea’s proximity to China, Kim’s nuclear brinkmanship represents a serious threat to the stability of the Xi administration.

[TigerLikesRooster]

An interesting comment in the above article which wants to explain why China has been helping NK's nuke and missile project

...Part of the reason for the hostilities between Xi and Kim is an ongoing factional struggle at the highest levels of the CCP. The Kim family is close to the influential faction of Jiang Zemin, the former CCP leader, and Xi’s chief rival. Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un, met Jiang in Beijing in 2004, while Jiang’s top lieutenants like Zhou Yongkang, Zhang Dejiang, and Liu Yunshan visited Pyongyang to review military parades and partake in other high-profile activities. The Jiang faction also appears to be helping the Kims with their nuclear ambition: In 2016, the Chinese authorities arrested Ma Xiaohong, a Chinese businesswoman with ties to the Jiang faction, for supplying North Korea with materials needed for its nuclear program....

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[mrsmith]

What would happen is millions of dirt-cheap laborers for Korean companies. China don’t need the competition.
Informative article.

[TigerLikesRooster]

A related article:

What happens if China and the U.S. both invade North Korea at once?

In the latest edition of the Foreign Affairs journal, Oriana Skylar Mastro, professor of security studies at Georgetown University, writes that Beijing wants to avoid war over North Korea. “But if its attempts to deter the United States from escalating the crisis to a major war failed, Beijing would not hesitate to send considerable Chinese forces into North Korea to ensure its interests were taken into account during and after the war.”

[bitt]

p

[Lurker]

SKS rifles. Interesting.

L

[null and void]

Join the Chinese military they said

We've got strippers they said.

[Lurker]

Seriously though, look at them. Who in their right mind chrome plates an SKS? I doubt those things can even be fired safely. They look like they’ve been polished right out of any working tolerance.

I’ll bet they’ve been welded shut for “safety”.

L

[null and void]

They are intended as parade ground queens. They are strictly for show.

They also have actual combat troops with actual combat ready arms.

[Hugh the Scot]

“parade” rifles. They aren’t meant to be fired.

[captain_dave]

SKS rifles — Used for parades. The US Army uses M-14s for parades.

[Lurker]

“They also have actual combat troops with actual combat ready arms.”

Oh I know that. But you’d think they’d have some snappy 47s for Parade, not some crappy knock off SKS garbage.

L

[Lurker]

“The US Army uses M-14s for parades.”

Indeed.

L

[captain_dave]

Officers from both armies carry swords on parades, but we don’t use them in the field.

[Strac6]

It all depends on who Xi chooses to replace Kim.

Best result would probably be sort of a Raul Castro-style transition; NK gives up 80% of it’s shock army capability, nucs and missiles in exchange for $ and Yuan, and gradual removal of 80% of our forces in SK.

DPRK simply ceases to matter very much.

That way it remains a labor and coal source for PRC and a buffer against US or SK moving into PRC, and we remove their nucs from world stage and save bazillions of $.

[Strac6]

PS: I think my “solution” is a bit “Kissingerian”.

:)

Be well.

[umgud]

“The US Army uses M-14s for parades.”

The Chinese have to use SKS's, they're too short to use M-14s.

[null and void]

Oh I know that. But you’d think they’d have some snappy 47s for Parade, not some crappy knock off SKS garbage.

But but but everything China makes is a crappy knock off of some garbage!...

[alloysteel]

First, generations of propaganda drilled into the minds and consciousness of the North Korean people, regarding the dissolute ways and immorality of the South Koreans, would have to be somehow expunged, before the North Koreans would even consent to be in contact with the South Koreans. Habits ingrained from an early age tend to have a strong grip, just look at the East Germans after they were “assimilated” into the West German culture after the Wall was taken down. Many of the diehard Reds were among the greatest of malcontents after the reunification of Germany, including but not limited to Angela Merkel herself, who seems to be tirelessly working to undermine the modern German state, in large part by letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented “refugees”, with predictable results.

China’s best option at the moment is to retain the organizational structure of North Korean government, but to sort of cause Kim Jong Un to “retire” in favor of a more malleable and compliant puppet, and sharply tone down any talk of resuming hostilities.

Failing that, a sufficiently large show, or even application of military might with full UN sanction, would go far in possibly tamping down fatboi’s ambitions, or things may have to move to the point where a crushing military defeat of the North Korean army is the only viable option left. North Korea, and a sizable part of South Korea, would resemble Germany in May 1945, because there will be a lot of noise made, things broken, and collateral damaged expressed in body count by all parties involved.

The US Army of 2018 is not going to be the United Nations military of 1954, at the time the truce was finally drawn up, and there will be no constraining “mercy” to be applied to those who defend North Korea today.

In 1953 and early 1954, there were no “bunker buster” bombs capable of taking out some heavily fortified underground installations, and the “tank killer” missiles that can be launched from even over the horizon at any armored vehicles that the North Koreans may attempt to put in the field. A few well placed “daisy cutters” or even Massive Open-Air Burst ordnance effectively clears large areas of massed troop formations, all with never having to resort to nuclear destruction.

Unfortunately, perhaps most of Seoul may have to be sacrificed to a rain of mortar fire from North Korean emplacements, before they are destroyed by the kind of assault described above. But in much of North Korea, there will be few military units intact enough to continue the fight.

Kim Jong Un would not live long enough to gain any insight from having opened a very large can of whup-azz on himself.

[Strac6]

The problem is, we would be dealing with a huge, well-trained Shock Army, ready to march for 6-8 days with no assistance, and to keep marching, regardless of losses. When a MOAB is dropped, the troops 1 Km to the rear are soon moving forward over the bodies of their dead comrades, and we would run out of bombs long before they run out of bodies.

All their SP Arty, SP bridging, engineer units, etc. are already forward. No mess, supply or medical units, because they simply don’t care about those issues.

We would lose most of our C&C in the first 4 hours due to DPRK airborne and air-landed forces.

8 years ago, the brief was that Norks would take South in 4 days, even without using Slime.

The problem then, for them, and it was and is a totally unsolvable one is, what would they do with SK? No food, no industry, no comm, no economy.... and no way to sustain or restart them.

Kim doesn’t want SK. He wants his nucs to give him the free Golden Ticket, food, money, etc.