A second crop of leaked U.S. embassy cables from the past two years has revealed the belief in South Korean diplomatic quarters that while China will be powerless to stop North Korea from collapsing within three years of Kim Jong Il’s death, a new generation of Chinese leaders may be emerging with less opposition to the idea of a united Korea than the existing elite.
However, the cables also reveal the current view of China and Russia; until the transfer of power to Kim Jong Eun is complete, it will not be possible to deal productively with a belligerent Pyongyang.
In one of the frankest cables in the Wikileaks collection, referencing a conversation between then-South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Chun Young Woo and U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens on February 17th this year, Chun is cited as claiming that China “would not be able to stop North Korea’s collapse following the death of Kim Jong Il.”
“The DPRK (North Korea) had already collapsed economically; following the death of Kim Jong Il, North Korea would collapse politically in ‘two to three years,’” Chun reportedly predicted.
However, Chun also added in the same cable that it is South Korea’s assessment that China will neither reject nor intervene in the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
“Chun argued that, in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly ‘not welcome’ any U.S. military presence north of the DMZ,” the cable concedes, adding that, however, Chun believes China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a ‘benign alliance’; as long as Korea was not hostile towards China.”
“Tremendous trade and labor-export opportunities for Chinese companies,” Chun apparently suggested, “would also help salve PRC concerns about living with a reunified Korea.”
Meanwhile, Chun also asserted that China’s opinion is closely linked to the age of its leading officials, but that their opinion is moving in South Korea’s favor.
While Chun is quoted as saying he sees China’s then-Six-Party Talks chief negotiator Wu Dawei as an “arrogant, Marx-spouting former Red Guard who ‘knows nothing about North Korea, nothing about nonproliferation and is hard to communicate with because he doesn’t speak English,’” not to mention a “hardline nationalist, loudly proclaiming, to anyone willing to listen, that the PRC’s economic rise represented a “return to normalcy” with China as a great world power,” he also believes there is also a new group of “sophisticated Chinese officials” who believe “Korea should be unified under ROK (South Korean) control” and are ready to ‘’face the new reality’ that the DPRK now had little value to China as a buffer state, a view that since North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC leaders.”
Meanwhile, while Chun was engaging in speculation, another conversation dating back to early 2009 reveals that the Chinese leadership may indeed mirror this view, and is certainly very concerned about North Korea’s unpredictable behavior.
In a frank conversation between the U.S. and Chinese ambassadors to Kazakhstan over dinner on June 5th, 2009, shortly after the May 25th second North Korean nuclear test, Ambassador Cheng Guoping reportedly asserted to U.S. Ambassador Richard Hoagland that China “hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term,” but “expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term.”
Regardless, the Chinese ambassador claims, North Korea’s activities are a “threat to the whole world’s security” and must be curtailed.
However, Guoping adds that China’s strategy is limited by events. Since Kim Jong Il’s efforts to elevate Kim Jong Eun are not the result of a well-planned strategy, rather an ad hoc response to Kim’s deteriorating health, North Korea is a rather unstable place, and therefore China’s aims are, Guoping claims, simply “to ensure they honor their commitments on nonproliferation, maintain stability, and ‘don’t drive [Kim Jong Il] mad.’”
Guoping’s view, that dealing with North Korea will remain hard as long as there is a power transfer underway, is amplified in a cable from the same period outlining the views of Russian deputy nuclear negotiator Grigoriy Logvinov.
Logvinov, who arrives in Seoul this week for talks on the Yeonpyeong Island shelling, explained in another cable that slightly predates the second nuclear test of 2009 that “Pyongyang was being particularly intransigent because it wanted to demonstrate strength to the outside world and mask the power struggle occurring internally.”
“Recalling the political instability around the time of Stalin and Mao’s deaths,” the cable notes that Logvinov “indicated Moscow understood the possible fallout of a North Korean succession scenario because ‘we have seen this before.’”
Therefore, Logvinov asserted, “nothing was likely to induce North Korea to abandon its current course and return to the negotiating table until the succession crisis passed. The only thing the Six-Party partners could do in the meantime, he stressed, was to wait out the power transition while preventing Pyongyang from further wrongdoing.”
The cables also reveal in uncharacteristically glib, undiplomatic language what other leaders, notably Singporean founding father Lee Kwan Yu, think about Kim Jong Il.
In a second June, 2009 cable, former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee is cited as describing the North Korean leadership as “psychopathic types”, with a “’flabby old chap’ for a leader who prances around stadiums seeking adulation.”
