N. Korea: China on alert over a nuclear neighbour(PLA pouring into the border)

Sunday Times ^ | 10/08/06 | Michael Sheridan

[BenLurkin]

Makes sense.


And as you said -- Red China and the U.S. are not on the same side.

[Iris7]

It seems likely that the (Chinese) People's Liberation Army will cross the border. I rather think that Kim Jong Il is too foolish for this game. What a bunch of dead people there will be.

The official estimate of the DPRK population is twenty three million people. The southern Republic of Korea should expect something like two million refugees. The only way to stop them from coming would be machine guns.

Of course if two million North Koreans are welcomed guests then two million is much too small a number.

[elmer fudd]

It's Monday in NK. No boom yet.

Not that WE know about anyway. I'm sure that as soon as it happens there will be a dozen or more governments around the world that will know about it through various monitering methods, but they might not tell us about it right away.

[ruiner]

Governments aside, thousands of university/research seismographs would pick up the compression waves. There are quite distinct.

No secrets here.

[Iris7]

I think the Chinese deal with the United states is essentially complete. Probably just last minute adjustments are left. Chinese guarantees to Japan are probably unsettled. The Japanese Abe government is an indication this is so.

The Russian - Chinese deal appears complete also. The United States government is a bit miffed at being left out of that one. A major Russian - Japanese deal is in the works with negotiation now at the "who gets what and who pays for it?" stage.

The politics of East Asia are most interesting.

[Wilhelm Tell]

North Korea has been China's pet pit-bull and now the Chinese are discovering that their pet has rabies. North Korea with nuclear weapons presents a problem for China as it does for everyone else. It is interesting that even the Chinese communists are getting disgusted with the inhumanity of the North Korean regime.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #25

Everybody gets a piece except S. Korea, whose brilliant superman called Roh Moo-hyun still hallucinates that he got everything in control.

[engrpat]

I look at Kim the same as I do Clinton...anything to stay in the news, anything to be in the spot light.

[RightWhale]

Perhaps the test was yesterday. More of a phhttt than a boom. Nobody wants to go down in that mineshaft, but the chief engineer automatically gets the short straw.

[monkeywrench]

It's not china's to take. Do you imagine the South Koreans want the chicoms sitting on top of them?

[monkeywrench]

"interesting that even the Chinese communists are getting disgusted with the inhumanity of the North Korean regime."

The inhumanity of the chicoms is of the same stuff as the norks.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

This should be 'interesting'....

[Zhang Fei]

The article is a little confusing. I think all it is saying is that the CHinese are cultivating a disrespect for NK among their troops in anticipation of annexing parts of of NK after Kim leaves power.

If the Chinese have thought this through, they won't do it. There is no way the ROK's are going to stand for a Chinese invasion, let alone an annexation of North Korea. Koreans are nationalistic and xenophobic to a fault. If China moves in, I would expect the ROK's to coordinate a move north with their North Korean counterparts. China would replace Japan as a hate figure in Korean eyes. And both Japan and the US would stand to win major brownie points with South Korea by supporting - with men and equipment - a South Korean push north. At long last, the South Koreans will finally figure out who their friends really are. I can't really see how a Chinese push south is feasible.

At the same time, it's also unnecessary. China provides the majority of North Korea's food and fuel for free. If China turned off the spigot, it could both shut down North Korea's nuclear program and turf out Kim Jong Il (via a generals' revolt).

A Chinese invasion is unlikely to succeed and is likely to be unnecessary to get regime change. I think we have to face the facts - what China is doing here is mounting a misleading propaganda effort to convince the West that Kim Jong Il isn't really China's handpuppet despite significant evidence that China owns Kim. I think China believes that the chances of a nuclear northeast Asia are remote even if North Korea tests a nuke. I think they're right. My feeling is that Uncle Sam will successfully restrain its allies from adopting nukes, on pain of excommunication from existing mutual defense pacts. Bottom line - China can't lose.

Note that the stuff about Chinese fears of fallout is a bunch of hyped-up BS. Chernobyl led to 47 immediate deaths and 4,000 delayed cancer deaths. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities nuked in 1945, today have triple and double the populations they had before the bombing.

[Iris7]

Nuclear devices of quite low power can be made. An high explosive deep ground burst in hard rock that would appear very much like a fractional kiloton nuclear device is not even very expensive if one has an appropriate unused deep rock mine shaft. I suspect that two or three thousand tons of conventional modern mining explosives costing a few million dollars would be hard to distinguish from a Hiroshima type bomb when fired 6,000 feet down if the charge were well tamped and constrained by a concrete filled access tunnel.

Kim Jong Il might enjoy such a jest. He could even release a video covering the building of such a device (for "peaceful mining purposes", naturally) and then set off his nuke instead.

[motorola7]

There won't be any "test". This is just the same old scam run by China and NK to tweak the West. And now Iran and probably Russia are clued in as well.
Kim plays the loose cannon with nukes; China is the only country can can have any effective influence, and America must beg them to "rein in" the nutjob in Pyongyang (meanwhile the Chicoms are lasering American satellites are running massive hacker attacks).
As usual the dust-up diverts attention from the Iranian nuke situation as sanctions seem to be a bit more likely. Another favor delivered to China's new best friend, Iran.
Keep in mind that China is THE "root proliferator" of nuclear technology through NK, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and now Iran.
It's all part of China's clandestine war against the US.
This is not going to change and Kim is not going away. He is too valuable to the Chinese.

[Iris7]

Interesting. Certainly the NPRK is an important part of Beijing's Japan strategy. On the other hand a Japan able and willing to fight a nuclear war is not.

A nice little North Korean "provocation" could be a convincing casus bellum. Perhaps a fabricated "Archduke Ferdinand" incident?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

NK's current situation seems, to this poster, very similar to the situation faced by the hostage-takers in Iran, on the day President Ronald Reagan walked up to that podium.

Except this time it's not the American president whose presense itself in office, changes the course of history.

It is Abe, who is shaking Asia today.

China analysis concludes we Americans are China's eventual enemy. This is the same sort of simplistic analysis which led to the book several years ago called "The Coming War with Japan".

In that book - the role of a rising China, was completely ignored, as the authors concluded America would inevitably fight another war with Japan.

Chinese analysis of America as its biggest threat - is falling into the same trap, in reverse.

Japan could go nuclear in a matter of weeks. Big time. Not just a couple large heavy, primative bombs - Japan could become one of the most significant nuclear powers on earth, almost immediately. They've got all the parts. Knowhow. Technology. Electronics. Launch capability. And fuel.

Literally, all that's lacking is the "go" order.

Abe is the sort of leader, who would give that order, if pressed.

China has been so busy preparing for America as the threat - they took their eyes off Japan - the country which conquered China in the last war. A war during which China, and America incidentally fought on the same side.

Japan, could become the 800 pound gorilla in the room with China. Dwarfing its neighbors, and standing toe to toe with China - presenting a far closer, and far more immovable threat than America, with our whining Democrat opposition.

Japan could present a far tougher opponent to China, than even we could.

China's leaders and people are just now realizing how serious that possibility has just become. Almost overnight.

Ronald Reagan was just inaugurated.

In Tokyo.

[Iris7]

Indeed.

Mr. Roh is either very stupid or has a hidden agenda. It is wisest to assume that Mr. Roh simply cannot be as stupid as he seems. The same can be said of the "Glorious Leader" and "Lodestar of the 21st Century", Mr. Kim.

Josef Stalin was really so much better at this sort of thing than than is this modern lot. "History repeats itself as farce".

[ruiner]

I'd be willing to bet there are subtle difference between seismic profiles of underground nuclear blasts (even small ones) and underground high explosives detonations of similar yield.

Anyone know for sure?

[Tijeras_Slim]

There is considerable difference, even when the nuclear device is set off in a oversized cavity to promote "decoupling".