North Korea is China's "Borrowed Knife"

CFP ^ | March 7, 2005 | Alan Caruba

[MikeEdwards]

It just never fails to amaze me how, throughout history and, in particular, the last century, nations great and small saw what was coming and yet were unable or unwilling to stop two world wars and an endless spate of smaller, but no less deadly conflicts. Which brings us to today where we peer across the vast Pacific Ocean at North Korea and wonder whether its leader is insane enough to launch a nuclear-armed missile at us or maybe just at South Korea or Japan?

That’s the kind of calculus the President has to make every day while the rest of us must depend on the following kind of reporting out of Beijing. It was February 18th and Elaine Kurtenbach of the Associated Press wrote, "China said yesterday it will send a top Communist Party official to North Korea for talks in an effort to break the stalemate over the North’s nuclear program, but Beijing urged its diplomatic partners to be patient as it deals with the volatile country, a longtime ally." She went on to say that, "China, the North’s biggest backer and major source of aid to the impoverished country, has been wary of openly testing its influence on Pyongyang." Wary?

This is what passes for informed reporting. The only problem is that, when China says, "jump", North Korea says "How high?" Pyongyang is owned lock, stock and barrel by China. It was originally the creation of the former Soviet Union’s dictator, Stalin, who picked Kim Il Sung, the father of the current despot, Kim Jong Il, to aid the expansion of the USSR with an audacious attack on the South, on June 24, 1950. . . . .