Yep! And current South Korean president is of that ilk!
Yep; that too. And I actually think he is worse, like more closely aligned with Beijing than the dictators in NK. He is like other Korean leaders from the distant past, who feared China so much that they considered it better for their country to be vassal of the emperors in Beijing.
A Korean leader that did not see it that way was the leader that brought about the Korean script/alphabet and teaching the use of that script, and its use throughout education - to begin to dispense with the use of written Chinese. He then terribly upset the Chinese when he had Korea observatories built, had Korean astronomers plot the courses of the stars and planets in the sky and had the official Korean astrologers throw out the Chinese calendar & zodiac and chart ones unique to Korea, in Korean. Even the Japanese of that day never went that far to divorce themselves from those cultural hand-me-downs from China.
Many weak Korean kings often looked to suzerainty under the Chinese as a hedge against other neighbors - better to be a little guy under the protection of China’s emperors than all alone. Others sought to stand out and be more independent with their challenges, like with Japan frequently.
It is my guess that if the early industrial modernization period in Asia had been with China and not Japan, the early 20th century would have seen the occupation of Korea by China, not Japan.