Kim Jong Il’s recent trip to China was his seventh, and we may yet find it turns out to have been the last.
This is not necessarily due to his health; indeed, one look at his face suggests that Kim is recovering quite well. Equally, if you were to look for hard evidence to back the above claim then you probably wouldn’t find anything unduly convincing. However, in the view of one source who has been closely following the movements of Kim Jong Il for a long time, this most recent trip was quite different from the previous six.
This author originally believed the opposite; that Kim’s voyage to Tumen represented an extension of his trips in May and August last year. However, that does not seem to have been the case; Kim Jong Il visited China this time around with fresh determination. However, it did not go according to plan.
What were Kim’s requests? Maybe they were military. Presumably, he asked for bombers and the newest model of fighter jet (both free of charge) from China. From the Chinese perspective, the problem is not the fact that Kim Jong Il would ask for these weapons for free, but that giving them is politically untenable. This is down to the United States; when the United States supplies Taiwan with arms, China lashes out with venomous criticism, but if China were to provide North Korea with weapons, then they would not be able to call for the United States to stop doing so.
In the end, Taiwan is a much more critical Chinese national interest than North Korea. Desiring to avoid harming the diplomatic line of ‘One China’, Hu Jintao will never be able to grant Kim Jong Il’s military requests.
These days, some suppose that North Korea benefits massively from China via, for instance, immense economic cooperation. However, that is not true. The amount of support that North Korea receives from China is much less than you might expect; supplies of oil and food which do not exceed what is required to keep North Korea alive. Everything else is provided through real trade between the two countries.
It has apparently been that way since the time of Zhou Enlai. Hwang Jang Yop, a former high-ranking North Korean official, said of Chinese assistance that it was “approximately $100 million per year, most of which was in providing aviation fuel at no cost.” If we exclude the Friendship Glass Factory, which the Chinese government constructed, Beijing does not provide much aid to North Korea at all, then, and most of the aid it does provide goes towards investments in small and medium-sized businesses
Accordingly, the assertion that “North Korea extracts all its aid from China, which is why South Korea must revitalize economic cooperation,” reflects an overblown opinion held by a part of the population which thinks that failed North Korean policies of the past can be revitalized through political means. This claim, however, is empty.
Simply, though it is true that there has been a relative increase in economic cooperation between China and North Korea of late, the truth is that the Kaesong Industrial Complex is still North Korea’s largest domestic economic cooperative project. Kim Jong Il may pour forth about how well China has reformed and opened itself up to the world, but he knows that doing the same is beyond him.
In October 2000, a group of top South Korean media executives went to North Korea and inquired of Kim Jong Il, “Wouldn’t it would be good to open up and reform?” to which he responded that North Korea cannot. By this he meant that once a country is open, the results can be uncontrollable. Indeed, former South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun, upon his return from the 2007 inter-Korean summit, suggested that South Korea should “hold back from saying, ‘reform and opening’” resulting in, among other changes, the Ministry of Unification removing the term from its website.
China is not the same, of course. It is a country whose leaders know exactly what is beneficial to them and what is harmful. For example, at the time of the Cheonan sinking, China did not allow North Korea to be named as the culprit by the UN Security Council, explaining that Chinese interests were served best by the maintenance of the status quo. It was a decision rooted in pure national interest.
For South Korea, of course, the idealism and populism by which it is gripped lead it to choose routes that cause it harm.
Regardless, this author believes that the radical difference in the way that China and Kim Jong Il interpret their relationship has now been clearly defined. That is why this recent trip could turn out to be Kim’s last.
Both China and North Korea accept that their relationship is symbiotic, it is true. For that reason, Kim Jong Il is able to attract China’s top leaders when he visits. However, the difference lies in recognition of priorities, and it is this gap that grows wider with time.
Kim Jong Il sees the relationship as basically one born of military strategy and Party-to-Party shared interests. Simply put, his view of the relationship is founded on that of the Kim Il Sung-Mao Zedong era.
For this reason, Kim Jong Il, during trips last May, last August and again this month, propagandized a revival of China-North Korea relations to those of a bygone age. Following in the footsteps of this father, Kim Jong Il visited Yuwen Middle School in Jilin; met Hu Jintao in Gilisheng, where his father met Mao Zedong during his time in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army; and had ‘Dream of the Red Chamber,’ (Mao Zedong’s favorite play from the Qing Dynasty, which he once saw with Kim Il Sung) performed. Needless to say, he made sure to visit Mudanjiang, another important city in his father’s life. He also went to Yangzhou and emphasized a “strong relationship connecting generations.”
So, to Kim Jong Il, we can see that Chinese support consists of the same things it did during the Korean War: 1) military aid; 2) diplomatic support by way of a common wish to counter American hegemony; and 3) economic support. These things are apt to change order with the times, of course, yet military support is a constant.
Therefore, food is outweighed in urgency by military support, and at the core of this are bombers and fighter jets. The MIG-19s and 21s of the North Korean air force are decrepit, and readily outclassed by the mere F-15s and 16s of the South Korean air force, much less the weapons of the USAF.
If the North Korean army were to launch a military provocation and South Korea were to make good on its threat to send in fighter jets in response, then the North would have to deploy their air force. Kim Jong Il knows, however, that with his current Soviet-era resources, this would not turn out well. For that reason, he is keen on obtaining Chinese hardware.
Moreover, to Kim’s mind, the fact that China is not providing military support to North Korea, even while expressing the wish to counter the United States, is lamentable. China’s diminishing economic support provides a grim aftertaste to the same. This is what compelled Kim to gather his resolve and attempt to express sincerity of purpose by travelling 3,000km to the hometown of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
But he mostly found a China that sees things rather differently. There is no doubting that North Korea’s location is strategically important to China. However, though the Chinese recognize the geopolitical importance of North Korea, they are not considering a return to the Mao Zedong-Kim Il Sung era that Kim Jong Il represents. 30 years have passed since China reformed and opened its markets and, as of March 1st this year, it will have been a decade since China joined the World Trade Organization. There is no turning back that clock.
Therefore, though the relationship between China and North Korea may be important to the officials of the respective countries, in terms of the relationship between countries in the context of the East Sea, it is detrimental. North Korea continues to do things including nuclear tests, the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Incidents and raising military tensions along the DMZ, disregarding the Chinese-style reforms and maintenance of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula that fit with the Chinese perspective.
This represents the largest gap that stands between Hu Jintao and Kim Jong Il. The fundamental problems between the two lie in North Korea’s readiness to raise military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and China’s slow inching towards observing international norms.
For these reasons, it is possible that Kim Jong Il was angry as he left China, and it is possible that this was his last trip.
So now Kim Jong Il has before him three options: nuclear tests, missile launches, and military provocations in the West Sea. All of which would represent yet another attempt to prove to China that North Korea continues to be of military importance and to force the United States to press for another cooperative effort to forge a peace. It follows that the possibility of another military provocation is now high.
