The chinese themselves find the norks to be increasingly distasteful. So the strange thing is that Beijing would not think it natural that south korea would want to defend itself from the increasingly bellicose north koreans.
I’m thinking that it must be the PLA&N that runs foreign policy with North Korea. In fact, it looks like PLA&N runs increasing amount of China’s foreign policy around its near abroad southern waters.
While other parts of China’s government run foreign policy further from home.