Posted on 10/08/2006 8:43:01 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The Sunday Times October 08, 2006
China on alert over a nuclear neighbour
Michael Sheridan, North Korean/Chinese border
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.
China has no permanent enemies.
China has permanent interests.
I'm more than happy to let the Chinese do it. If you've ever seen the way the NKs have fortified the border over the last 54 years you'd be happy too.
None of these alliances in Asia are permanent.
Some people still check in occasionally to the TLR-inspired North Korea threads here, and write on FR as if China and North Korea are in total league and alliance, that this is still 1950. It is not and a lot has changed and much more will change.
Most if not all political analysts I know in the region know of and believe in the rift as of this time.
well,guys
don't be so hostile to china.
in fact,the current world order is not only good to u american,but also to china.
china also want to keep the current world order .
the only guy who wants to throw out the current order is N.K.,is the crazy Kim.
china and U.S. should stand together to copy with situation and keep the order,instead of distrust each other.
Kim is a crazy guy.
if u american were to get rid of him,most chinese people would be very glad to see it and applaud.
of course,at that time,chinese government would have to send some insagnificant scold to U.S in public for its allance treaty with N.K. ,but i am sure chinese government would be glad to stand by and relax itself in heart.
"She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village," the soldier later told his relative.
Such liberalization. I thought the Chinese were just this side of a democracy now, and we should feel free to spend billions without concern over human rights, as things were getting better all the time.
Illegal aliens in China get sent home where they get a cable through the neck. Illegal aliens in America can protest, get free health care, pay no taxes, and can vote (if they don't get caught). UN Human Rights comission?
But at least on this DPRK situation, I would have to say my discussion with some Chinese officials in parts of Asia convinced me that they were absolutely sold on the idea that Kim Jong il is a crazy nut who ruins all of Asia with his antics. In that sense the interests of China and USA merge somewhat. You do admit that if KJI falls, China would prefer a Pyongyang regime without nukes but full in the China orbit, correct? Just as the US would like to see a reunified Korea under a democratically elected, pro-Western administration.
Stating that China analysis has concluded America is their eventual enemy, is not hostility.
It is called reality. China is preparing for eventual conflict with America. We must not ignore that.
China can stop those preparations any time. They do not.
Are you from mainland China?
No, the chicoms want a new world order with them on top, our control of major sea lanes finished, our influence over. Listen to their proxies talk. Statements from our leaders have been very under reported.
Yogi eso Chunguk saram isumnidda.
Except, of course, for that little skirmish we refer to as the "Korean War." Sheesh.
The only ones allowed to post at this forum from china are chicom trolls.
I would learn a lot more from them re: Chinese thinking on things than I could ever get at the NYT, WP, CNN or DU website.
China created the monster and deserves what she gets.
Actually, the Soviet Union was more integral in the actual formation of the monster known as the DPRK than Red China was, albeit China's direct participation with the KPA during the Korean War.
Here's an idea...
China can have North Korea, providing they give up their claims on Taiwan.
I'd like to see the chicoms handle it also. I'd be curious to see them in action. They haven't fought any significant battles in over fifty years and the last time they tangled with anyone (vietnam) I believe they got their clock cleaned.
Mej gdw fu be.
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