Could China Come To North Korea’s Defence If Tensions Escalate Over Nuclear Weapons Tests?

This is the big question we should be asking right now, along with Britain’s future role in any Korean conflict.

This writer, who currently works closely with several ex-government Chinese expats and has spoken to one North Korean defector, believes China would defend North Korea in case tensions escalate on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations.

NORTH Korea’s latest nuclear test yesterday, which has the power to mount a nuclear warhead on ballistic missiles that could be aimed at its enemies, has set a dangerous precedent in East Asian geopolitics.

While talking about a Third World War may be sensationalist, describing what could actually happen next as the West’s nightmare after Afghanistan and Iraq, is not.

On the Korean peninsula, the Cold War has never ended and, one could rationally argue, the Korean Peninsula is still technically at war, as the 1950–53 conflict ended in an armistice. The US stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.

Add to the equation that North Korea’s army of 1.2 million soldiers has been increasingly deployed toward the South Korean border, and you can see why the Korean peninsula looms as potentially the next American, and quite possible UK, military nightmare.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen a robust increase in the number and kinds of missiles tested this year. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to perfect new platforms for launching them — submarines and mobile launchers.

The longer ranges and mobile launchers give the North greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed throughout Asia.

North Korea has already fired three medium-range Rodong missiles that traveled about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and landed near Japan. Earlier this year, a missile from a North Korean submarine flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles), the longest distance achieved by the North for such a weapon. This worried many South Koreans because submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based weapons.

Kim Jong Un’s military scientists are also close to perfecting
Musudan intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) with an ability to travel up to 4,000km — meaning it could reach all of Japan and the American territory of Guam, where the US has military bases.

North Korea’s Scud-Cs and No-dong-As, with ranges of 300 to 1,000 miles, are all capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. And the long-long range Taep’o-dong-2 missile, which North Korea has also been perfecting, has a range of 2,300 to 9,300 miles, which means it could conceivably hit the continental United States.

In addition to its nuclear and missile capability, North Korea boasts 100,000 well-trained special-operations forces and one of the world’s largest biological and chemical arsenals. It has stockpiles of anthrax, cholera, and plague, as well as eight industrial facilities for producing chemical agents — any of which could be launched at Seoul by the army’s conventional artillery.

But despite widespread universal censure of North Korea’s aggressive military stance, China is arguably more disturbed by the prospect of one of its vassal (subordinate) states going rogue, at a time when it is trying to project the image of a benevolent global superpower.

Of course, there is some evidence to suggest that Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government have had enough of Kim Jong-un’s unilateral exploits. Cross-border trade activities, essential to North Korea’s economic well-being, have declined, and the flow of regular funds from China have also been curtailed. China has also backed a new United Nations resolution to toughen sanctions against Pyongyang and has also enforced new bans on imports of coal, iron ore, gold, titanium and rare earths, and exports of a range of products, including jet fuel, to North Korea.

But none of this necessarily signals a possible new chapter in mutual relations. And, although it seems unlikely that China will provide military aid in the event of a conflict or war, there remains a big question mark over China’s intentions.

This writer, who currently works closely with several ex-government Chinese expats and one North Korean defector, believes China would defend North Korea in case tensions escalate on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations.

When asked at a press conference last month on the sidelines of the ­National People’s Congress meeting whether China would help defend North Korea in case of a conflict or war as Beijing did during the 1950–53 Korean war, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China would neither tolerate instability on the Korean peninsula, nor accommodate Pyongyang’s pursuit of a nuclear and missile programme.

The crux of the matter is a mutual defence pact between the two communist allies, that the West takes lightly, but China takes very seriously indeed. China and North Korea signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance 55 years ago, under which Beijing pledged to give assistance to Pyongyang in the event of an attack.

The overseas edition of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published an online commentary earlier this year saying China was still committed to protecting North Korea against potential outside attacks.

A reliable source, who is a former government adviser and defected from North Korea to the UK, said China might be caught in a difficult position because of its security commitments in case of an emergency or conflict.

North Korea is simply too strategically important to be abandoned by China. As long as the treaty is still in force, China is obliged to ­intervene if tensions continue to escalate or even get out of ­control,” they said.

China certainly needs regional stability for its continued economic growth, while the South China Sea, where Beijing is engaged in territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, is another factor that must be taken into consideration when weighing up China’s mindset on North Korea.

For their part, the US and Japan — which warily view China’s increasing assertiveness in the South and East China Seas — have been mounting pressure on Beijing, as seen in President Barack Obama’s recent visit to its former enemy Vietnam to bolster ties, and also in the declaration adopted in the G7 summit held in Japan earlier this year.

China is widely viewed as the only country with substantial clout over North Korea, and Beijing might be thinking it is better to mend fences with Pyongyang and keep it as a strategic card to play in dealing with pressure from Washington and Tokyo over the South China Sea issue.

The furor over Kim Jong Un’s missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea’s catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades.

Journalist and writer Robert D. Kaplan, in his insightful article ‘When North Korea Falls’ (published in The Atlantic, almost 10 years ago), said: “If the governing infrastructure in Pyongyang were to unravel, the result could be widespread lawlessness (compounded by the guerrilla mentality of the Kim Family Regime’s (KFR) armed forces), as well as mass migration out of and within North Korea. In short, North Korea’s potential for anarchy is equal to that of Iraq, and the potential for the deployment of weapons of mass destruction — either during or after pre-collapse fighting — is far greater.”

But what if rather than simply unraveling, the North launched a surprise attack on the South? This is probably less likely to happen now than it was, say, two decades ago, when Kim Il Sung commanded a stronger state and the South Korean armed forces were less mature, but I believe the US, Japan and the UK are preparing for this possibility.

According to Kaplan ‘a conventional infantry attack on South Korea’s capital is something that not even a fool would contemplate. So if the North were to attack, it would likely resort instead to a low-grade demonstration of “shock and awe,” using its 13,000 artillery pieces and multiple-rocket launchers to fire more than 300,000 shells per hour on the South Korean capital, where close to half the nation’s 49 million people live. The widespread havoc this would cause would be amplified by North Korean special-operations forces, which would infiltrate the South to sabotage water plants and train and bus terminals. Meanwhile, the North Korean People’s Army would march on the city of Uijongbu, north of Seoul, from which it could cross over the Han River and bypass Seoul from the east.

But this strategy would fail. While American A-10 Warthogs, F-16 Vipers, and other aircraft would destroy enemy missile batteries and kill many North Korean troops inside South Korea, submarine-launched missiles and B-2 Spirit bombers sent from Guam and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri would take out strategic assets inside North Korea. In the meantime, the South Korean army would quickly occupy the transport hubs, while unleashing its own divisions and special-operations forces on the marauding People’s Army. The KFR knows this; thus any such invasion would have to be the act of a regime in the latter phases of disintegration. North Korea’s lone hope would be that the hourly carnage it could produce — in the time between the first artillery barrage on Seoul and the beginning of a robust military response by South Korea and the United States — would lead the South Korean left, abetted by the United Nations and elements of the global media, to cry out for diplomacy and a negotiated settlement as an alternative to violence.

And there is no question: the violence would be horrific. Iraq and Afghanistan would look clean by comparison.

Today, however, it is clear — at least to this writer anyway — that Kim Jong Un’s main goals in so aggressively displaying North Korea’s nuclear and missile capacity is to compel the United States to deal directly with him, thereby making his otherwise weakening state seem stronger. And the stronger Pyongyang appears to be, the better off it is in its crucial dealings with Beijing, which are what really matter to North Korea.

As for the UK? Well we seem to be preparing for a future role in Asia by tying ourselves more closely to US global aims as the delicate Brexit negotiations are carried forward.

The first question is whether Britain will want to expand the remit of its engagement with the region from trade to also encompass Asian security and political questions. This is a huge dilemma for our nation, just as it was before Iraq in both 1998 and 2003, Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001).

Image — Kim Il-sung (middle) with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong (right) at the celebrations in Beijing in 1954. Photo: SCMP Pictures