Biting the hand that feeds their fish to someone else

North Korea versus China... Who to root for? Or rather, who to root against?

This week we've had that rarest of situations where the Democratic People's Republic of the Kim Dynasty (DPRK) seems to be biting the proverbial hand that feeds them, the People's Republic of Crony Capitalists (PRC).

It seems that the North Koreans have taken over a Chinese fishing vessel and are holding the twenty-nine-member crew ransom until Beijing hands 1.2 million yuan (US$190K) over to Pyongyang. Much of the Western media are depicting this as a case of piracy, casting the Norks as the new Somalis. From the Associated Press:

A North Korean boat hijacked three boats with 29 Chinese fishermen on board and demanded 1.2 million yuan ($190,000) for their release, Chinese media reported Thursday.

It was unclear if a territorial dispute or piracy was behind the incident involving boats from the two communist-led nations. China is the North’s biggest diplomatic ally and source of economic assistance.

The fishing boats were hijacked in a Chinese section of the Yellow Sea on May 8 and moved to North Korean waters, the Beijing News reported. The paper said the North Korean boat was manned by armed men in blue hats and uniforms but didn’t otherwise identify them.

Border police in northeastern China’s coastal Liaoning province told the state newspaper they were in contact with the North Korean captors but declined to comment further.

One might think the AP is itself trying to show how tough it can be when reporting on North Korea, given the scrutiny it's been getting from those critical of the effusive reports from its freshly minted Pyongyang bureau, but a similar pro-Beijing perspective can be found at the Washington Post, AFP, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Guardian, etc. Although they're stating that the news is "according to Chinese reports," they're using terms like kidnapped at sea, ransom, and captors.

But just a doggone minute there. Those of us who pay closer attention to China because it's a quick boat ride away may have a different perspective on things, enough that we know it's unwise to accept Beijing's reports prima facie, even if the other party is Pyongyang, whose utterings should never be accepted prima facie.

See, those of us in the ROK know all about the Chinese fish pirates. We're used to reading about Chinese vessels illegally fishing in South Korea's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Yellow Sea or East China Sea and then attacking or even murdering ROK Coast Guard personnel who try to stop them.

To put it bluntly: If this is what Chinese fishing vessels do to the South Koreans in ROK waters or its EEZ, while Beijing fully denies it, why should we believe the Chinese fishermen are innocents when the North Koreans detain their boat? Angered by Pyongyang's plans for missile and nuke tests, and knowing full well how the rest of the world sees North Korea, it would be perfectly natural for Chinese officials to depict those poor Chinese fishermen as victims rather than thieves. The rest of the world is certainly lapping it up.

But think about something. North Korea may love brinkmanship, but in recent years it also follows a pattern when it detains foreign nationals. I'm probably going to get flak for saying this, but back when everyone assumed CurrentTV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were innocent travelers who had been kidnapped from the Chinese border region, I asserted the likelihood that the two Stupogants had actually entered North Korean territory. And I was right. Laura Ling claims that they were nonetheless captured after running back to Chinese territory, but it is highly doubtful that they would have been pursued and captured at all had they not entered North Korea illegally. And all along, the North Korean media was being truthful that the team had violated DPRK borders.

I'm still waiting to see what Pyongyang's Korea Central News Agency says about the Chinese fishing boats. Given the track record of the Chinese fish pirates and the not-so-inscrutible way one can discern fact from fiction in North Korean news media, I will be more inclined to believe that the Chinese had gone into North Korean waters or its EEZ if the North Korean media says they did.

My conclusion also stems in part from the realization that North Korea would have to have cojones the size of beach balls to capture and detain a Chinese fishing boat and then demand restitution unless they had cause.

Nevertheless, one also has to wonder about the Pyongyang regime's end game. As the title here suggests, Beijing is the hand that feeds Pyongyang (to a degree). Maybe this is just a way to let China know that it can never really control North Korea. Despite frequent claims of socialistic brotherhood, the North Koreans aren't particularly fond of the Chinese, regarding them in much the same way as those who made the 19th-century American cartoon below.

Those of us in South Korea are used to the Pyongyang regime b¡tch-slapping its ROK sponsors, so the Norks sticking it to the Chinese really isn't that unsurprising: North Korea's long-term strategy of pitting one economic/military/political power against another has involved begging for alms with one hand and then sucker-punching the benefactor with the other. During the Cold War, when Kim Ilsung was Moscow's and Beijing's headache, it was Russia-versus-China. Now it's a triangulation of Seoul, Beijing, and Washington (and occasionally a rectangulation or that includes Tokyo and/or Moscow).

And maybe China doesn't really have all that much control over North Korea to begin with. It can nudge the DPRK toward reform, it can promote socialism with Chinese characteristics, it can scold North Korea, it can huff and puff, but it's a mistaken calculus if you think that benefits of the PRC-DPRK relationship flow only one way. China wants to maintain its port presence in Rajin/Najin, and if it pisses off the Norks a bit too much, Beijing knows that Pyongyang can kick them out, like they've done or threatened to do to South Korean businesses and developers in Kŭmgangsan National Park or Kaesŏng Industrial Park.

So for now enjoy the show from the sidelines (and wonder just a bit if this is not part of a long-term strategy by Kim Jong-un or his handlers to move away from China and toward South Korea and/or its allies). In the meantime, I'm glad someone is standing up to the Chinese fish pirates. It looks like China is learning they messed with the wrong Korea.

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Pariah ship

Remember The Love Boat, where each episode would bring us three couples who found romance against the backdrop of a cruise ship plying the waters off the coast of an impoverished country where violence and mayhem were a way of life?

Well, it's back! But instead of Mexico being the dysfunctionally violent and poor country off whose shores they sailed, this time it's North Korea.

From The Guardian:

On Tuesday, the mysterious state launched itself into the glitzy world of cruise tourism when about 130 passengers set sail from the rundown port of Rajin, near the China-Russia border, for the scenic Mount Kumgang resort near the South Korean border.

Isolated North Korea's "state tourism bureau" has teamed up with a Chinese travel company to run the country's first cruise aboard an ageing 9,700-tonne vessel that once plied the waters off the east coast of the divided peninsula shuttling passengers between North Korea and Japan.

The ship was later used to transport cargo before Tokyo blocked its entry as part of economic sanctions over Pyongyang's missile and nuclear tests in 2006.

Some 500 North Koreans, about half dressed in dark workers' clothes and the others in office and traditional attire, waved off the ship in a choreographed performance on the potholed dock.

The spectators waved North Koreans flags and fake flowers, and let off fireworks to mark the occasion. Carnival music blared from two minivans.

Before the launch, Hwang Chol-nam, the vice-mayor of Rason City, gave a speech lauding the venture as part of the region's push to attract tourism.

Any nationality can visit the area visa-free. They must, however, arrange the trip through designated tour companies.

"Any country, people from America, Japanese, Singaporean, can come to Rason, that's the reality today, and that's the same for the Kumgang special economic zone," he told reporters aboard the vessel. ...

The cruise, which sails the length of North Korea's picturesque eastern coastline, will appeal not only to the adventurous seeking "something different", but also to gamblers wanting to try their luck at the North's casinos in Rason and Kumgang.

This brings up the whole issue of propping up the Pyongyang regime, of course, but I'm guessing some people just don't care or think it's merely a drop in the bucket.

I do take issue with The Guardian's description of Rajin as a rundown port. The Chinese are reportedly pouring a good deal of money into building the area up. I suppose the part off limits to North Korean civilians, however, might still be a bit dilapidated, but the region is enjoying a bit of a Rajin renaissance as China starts looking in that direction for an outlet to the sea that would justify propping up the DPRK.

In fact, one could call this a new Age of Rasŏn. Thanks, I'm here all week.

UPDATED:
The Huffington Post has pictures of the cruise and the cruise ship. It ain't no Carnival Cruise, that's for sure.

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China to send troops to Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region

[Yonhap graphic showing location of Rajin/Najin port (라진/나진, 
aka Rasŏn/Nasŏn or 라선/나선) in relation to China]

Peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula — defined in practical terms as Beijing pulling the plug on its support for the Pyongyang regime and allowing Seoul to absorb the DPRK without incident or interference — may have just gotten a lot harder. For the first time since 1994, China will station troops in North Korea, to protect the port facilities it is developing in Rasŏn (also known as Rajin or Najin).

From AFP:

China is in discussions with North Korea about stationing its troops in the isolated state for the first time since 1994, a South Korean newspaper reported Saturday.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted an anonymous official at the presidential Blue House as saying that Beijing and Pyongyang recently discussed details of stationing Chinese soldiers in the North's northeastern city of Rason.

The official said the soldiers would protect Chinese port facilities, but the location also gives access to the Sea of Japan (East Sea), while a senior security official was quoted as saying it would allow China to intervene in case of North Korean instability.

A spokeswoman for the Blue House said she had no information, while China's defence ministry declined comment to AFP on the matter this week.

"North Korea and China have discussed the issue of stationing a small number of Chinese troops to protect China-invested port facilities" in the Rason special economic zone, the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

"The presence of Chinese troops is apparently to guard facilities and protect Chinese nationals."

China reportedly gained rights in 2008 to use a pier at Rason, securing access to the Sea of Japan (East Sea), as North Korea's dependence on Beijing continues to grow amid a nuclear stand-off with the United States and its allies.

The last Chinese troops left the North in 1994, when Beijing withdrew from the Military Armistice Commission that supervises the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean war.

I couldn't find the Chosun Ilbo article they were talking about in English or in Korean [UPDATE: Destination Pyongyang has a Korean-language link in their excellent treatment of this news, and the Chosun Ilbo now has the story in English]. And I'm quite curious how many constitutes "a small number." In a nation of 1.3 billion, who knows?

We've already talked about development of these port facilities and the multi-billion-dollar economic package of which they are a part, what I call the "Manchurianization of North Korea." As a crucial element of its own attempt to reform North Korea, China is pressuring the Pyongyang regime to adopt Chinese-style economic reforms that will help integrate its economy with the PRC's northeastern provinces along its border with North Korea (that, I have been saying repeatedly, is the real story the Western media should be paying attention to instead of the supposed rise of the Kim Who Wasn't There™).

And what China gets out of it, they hope, is a stable satellite state (if not future territory, the Inner Cháoxiān Autonomous Region), along with coveted access to the East Sea (Sea of Japan). This is not something China will give up lightly, especially now that there will be PLA troops in North Korea to maintain their position no matter what happens to the DPRK government. I guess that's all the more reason to consider the solution I outlined just yesterday, which would be to preemptively grant China access in a unified Korea, in exchange for them stepping back and letting the Pyongyang regime collapse and Seoul pick up the pieces.

Perhaps there is some way to turn this big new wrinkle in our favor. One can't imagine that the North Korean citizenry is any fonder of foreign troops in their country than their fellow-traveling chinboista counterparts are in the South. So let's make this an issue in the propaganda we send to them. Lincolns, Hamiltons, and Jacksons have just enough room in the margins for a message like, "Kim Jong-il has allowed Chinese troops to occupy northern North Korea right now." Tie those to a mylar balloon and — boom! — instant disgruntlement.

Of course, fomenting such xenophobic antipathy would mean US troops would be rather unwelcome in the former DPRK once reunification occurs, but a big part of the aforementioned plan is to keep them out of the North anyway.