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Chinese Fears of North Korean Nukes
Times of London ^ | October 8, 2006 | Michael Sheridan

Posted on 10/07/2006 5:55:25 PM PDT by Thud

THE North Korean refugee had one request for her captors before the young Chinese soldiers led her back across the steel-girdered bridge on the Yalu River that divides two “socialist allies”.

“She asked for a comb and some water because she said that if she was going to die she could not face going to heaven looking as dirty and dishevelled as this,” recounted a relative of one soldier who was there.

What happened next is testimony to the rising disgust in Chinese military ranks as Beijing posts more troops to the border amid a crisis with North Korea over its regime’s plan to stage a nuclear test.

The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand — the soft part between thumb and forefinger — with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

“She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,” the soldier later told his relative. “Then they dragged her away.”

Such stories are circulating widely among Chinese on the border, where wild rumours of an American attack on nuclear test sites have spread fears of a Chernobyl-type cloud of radiation and sparked indignation at the North Koreans. “I’ve heard it a hundred times over that when we send back a group they stab each one with steel cable, loop it under the collarbone and out again, and yoke them together like animals,” said an army veteran with relatives in service.

As international tensions over North Korea have soared, China has deployed extra combat units of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to man the border from the Yalu River in the south to the Tumen River near Russia - evidently fearing the risk of chaos and collapse.

The troop trains were rolling even on the Chinese mid-autumn festival on Friday. Civilian traffic on a main line was halted to allow one train to pass, with carriages jammed with glum soldiers in camouflage uniforms and flat cars carrying olive-green military vehicles.

And while a few off-duty men strolled with their sweethearts under the full moon along the banks of the Yalu, others watched from outposts at the silent, darkened shores of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“All visits by Chinese have recently been stopped,” said a local official. “They gave us no reason for it.”

The bomb test could come as early as today, the eighth anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s ascent to the top of the North Korean Workers’ party and one day before South Korea’s foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, seeks election as secretary-general of the United Nations.

Last Friday, North Korea’s traditional allies, Russia and China, joined in a UN security council warning that a weapons test - likely to be in a disused mine 6,000ft underground in Shijung district near the Chinese border -would attract “universal condemnation”. It has put the Chinese under maximum pressure to restrain Kim. Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is due in Beijing today to urge on the effort and the leader of South Korea is coming to make the same plea on Monday.

China’s dilemma is that its ruling elites are still bound to those of North Korea by a like-minded political authoritarianism. President Hu Jintao has even praised North Korea for keeping to its Stalinist politics, a view he may be repenting now that Kim has brought China to the brink of a nuclear crisis.

Beijing’s main fear is that if Kim tests a bomb - the CIA believes he has enough plutonium for four; other US experts think more - then Japan will feel it has no choice but to acquire its own atomic arsenal. That would destroy the balance of power in northeast Asia that has kept the peace since the end of the second world war.

China’s secondary fear is that if Kim’s regime collapses, hundreds of thousands of desperate, hungry North Koreans, some armed, will flood across its border to sow unrest and instability.

The Chinese regularly round up small groups of escapees. But uncounted thousands have slipped into the towns and villages inhabited by ethnic Koreans in the border provinces, building gleaming new towers and labouring in fields of fat corn.

China’s prosperity lures the poverty-stricken but has failed to convince North Korea’s leaders to deviate from their course of rigid state control.

“Why are they poor?” asked a local official, who was drinking heavily in a bar at festival time. “Because that gangster Kim Jong-il spends all the money on nuclear weapons!” Several Chinese soldiers have died in clashes with rogue North Korean soldiers who have crossed the border, shot up buildings and, in one case, robbed a bank with their AK-47s.

A PLA platoon leader was killed last year while catching five North Koreans who had attacked a hotel, robbed guests and kidnapped the manager, according to state media. Shots were fired yesterday as five North Korean troops crossed into the southern side of the demilitarised zone that separates the two countries.

The Chinese authorities are also irate over an influx of counterfeit US dollar bills and vast quantities of fake Viagra from North Korea. Some 50,000 Chinese gamblers a year are estimated to cross the other way to squander their money, much of it suspected to be the fruits of official corruption, in a North Korean casino.

The sense that Kim’s regime is losing control lies behind the Chinese military buildup. But some South Korean MPs fear China could grab territory from the north in the event of a collapse.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; korea; nuclear; onfreep
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To: Quix
Knowledgeable. It's all public record, except for my opinion that the Bush administration and the Chinese govt. have made a deal. That is opinion only. Note the cessation of Chinese travel to NK:

"“All visits by Chinese have recently been stopped,” said a local official. “They gave us no reason for it.”

21 posted on 10/07/2006 6:39:26 PM PDT by Thud
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To: JasonC
What kind of animals do these Chinese goons have to be, to obey orders to send innocent human beings back into that hell-hole? Just let them in already. The country would collapse in days and you would own it, and everyone on earth would applaud. But moral action is impossible for evil-stupid men. If we can call them men.

The Chinese although implicit in this are not directly responsible. The North Koreans are responsible in this instance.
22 posted on 10/07/2006 6:39:26 PM PDT by kinoxi (.)
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To: kinoxi

eyu


23 posted on 10/07/2006 6:45:40 PM PDT by azhenfud (an enigma between two parentheses)
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To: kinoxi
Yes the Chinese are responsible. North Korea exists because of Chinese military force. They made it, they support it, they defend it against the civilized world, they prevent anyone else from doing anything about it and do nothing about it themselves. It is their utter disgrace and gives the lie to any claim they might otherwise have to be a civilized country.
24 posted on 10/07/2006 6:45:43 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: kinoxi; JasonC

I dare say the Chinese are indeed bloody handed for returning these innocent human beings back to these monsters!

The Chinese don't exactly have a clean record when it comes to valuing human life, especially that of the unborn.

I'm with Jason on this. He said it very well.

"What kind of animals do these Chinese goons have to be, to obey orders to send innocent human beings back into that hell-hole? Just let them in already. The country would collapse in days and you would own it, and everyone on earth would applaud. But moral action is impossible for evil-stupid men. If we can call them men."


25 posted on 10/07/2006 6:47:02 PM PDT by freeper_peeper
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To: JasonC
Okay, so by your logic Russia is responsible. They're responsible for encouraging the regime in China. Also by that logic American officers could be responsible for torture after returning illegals to their own country. I don't agree with the chicoms but to blame the individual guards in this instance is not right.
26 posted on 10/07/2006 6:52:41 PM PDT by kinoxi (.)
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To: Thud; All
Editorial

JoongAng Daily, South Korea
If North Tests The Bomb, South Will Need its Own ...

In order to protect itself from North Korean aggression, if Pyongyang proceeds with a nuclear test, South Korea will have no choice but to consider possessing nuclear weapons of its own. And it will be the same for both Japan and Taiwan, who would very likely follow suit.

Rather than pushing us to pursue peaceful coexistence within the region, the North's action would certainly lead Northeast Asian toward military confrontation. Pyongyang's possession of nuclear weapons would make it impossible for Northeast Asia to have and keep the peace...

27 posted on 10/07/2006 7:01:27 PM PDT by zipper
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To: Thud

Not sure I trust such deals much at all.

Seems like the puppet masters have too many hands in too many deals in our era.

I hope our President is cautious and tough.


28 posted on 10/07/2006 7:03:09 PM PDT by Quix (LET GOD ARISE AND HIS ENEMIES BE SCATTERED. LET ISRAEL CALL ON GOD AS THEIRS! & ISLAM FLUSH ITSELF)
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To: headstamp

Unspeakable.

Right up there with the Chinese treatment of the Tibetians.


29 posted on 10/07/2006 7:28:43 PM PDT by Sundog (In a world without Walls or Fences, who needs Windows or Gates?)
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To: Thud
"....where wild rumours of an American attack on nuclear test sites have spread fears of a Chernobyl-type cloud of radiation...."

Could it be NK has already had its accident, er, I mean test?

30 posted on 10/07/2006 7:33:35 PM PDT by azhenfud (an enigma between two parentheses)
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To: Thud
"stab each one with steel cable, loop it under the collarbone and out again, and yoke them together like animals"

How can the civilized world sit back and let these demons continue to treat their people like this?

We should use our air force and bomb the hell out of their military sites.
31 posted on 10/07/2006 7:44:13 PM PDT by garjog (Used to be liberals were just people to disagree with. Now they are a threat to our existence.)
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To: azhenfud

President Bush has an interesting public image in China.


32 posted on 10/07/2006 7:44:42 PM PDT by Thud
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To: Thud
Several Chinese soldiers have died in clashes with rogue North Korean soldiers who have crossed the border...

Interesting to note and contrast the recent experience in Lebanon with 3 Israeli soldiers, and what that triggered...

33 posted on 10/07/2006 7:58:09 PM PDT by C210N (Bush SPIED, Terrorists DIED!)
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To: C210N
Nah, hungry North Korean enlisted conscripts have been taking their personal weapons off base, crossing into China and perpetrating armed robberies for years, notably of banks, then crossing back into North Korea. That was when I said North Korea doesn't have an army anymore.

18-24 months ago the Chinese moved about 75,000 more troops to the Yalu as "bank guards".

34 posted on 10/07/2006 8:10:32 PM PDT by Thud
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To: C210N

I wouldn't be surprised if several hundred thousand Chinese humanitarian aid volunteers and hospital orderlies succor the starving North Koreans this year.


35 posted on 10/07/2006 8:13:12 PM PDT by Thud
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To: Thud

Fine, let them spend their own money, rather than pouring US taxpayer dollars down the rathole as usual.


36 posted on 10/07/2006 8:18:46 PM PDT by Pete98 (After his defeat by the Son of God, Satan changed his name to Allah and started over.)
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To: Pete98

You misunderstand the nature of the "humanitarian" activity.


37 posted on 10/07/2006 8:23:03 PM PDT by Thud
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To: JasonC

They do it to discourage them from coming over in the first place.

John


38 posted on 10/07/2006 8:30:30 PM PDT by Diggity
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To: Thud

China should put their foot down on North Korea.


39 posted on 10/07/2006 8:36:56 PM PDT by GOPJ (Quickest way to put the Foley scandal behind us is for Foley to switch parties - BufordP)
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To: Thud

China's best bet is to orchestrate a coup to put someone more pliable in charge while at the same time keeping NK alive as a client state. Any other solution is a bad one for them.


40 posted on 10/07/2006 8:38:27 PM PDT by flying Elvis
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