North Korea doesn' t have a whole lot of longtime friends on the world stage. In fact, as Pyongyang looks beyond its borders, it is likely to find only<\/b>
\nNorth Korea doesn’t have a whole lot of longtime friends on the world stage. In fact, as Pyongyang looks beyond its borders, it is likely to find only one world power ready to regularly defend its interests and actions in high-level international negotiations: China, its next-door neighbor, most important trading partner and staunch ally.
Yet that did not dissuade the North’s state-run news agency from releasing a rare broadside against Beijing on Wednesday, admonishing China by name for exacerbating tensions on the Korean Peninsula .
\u00ab\u00a0One must clearly understand that the DPRK’s line of access to nukes for the existence and development of the country can neither be changed nor shaken, \u00a0\u00bb reads a commentary attributed to someone named Kim Chol, using an abbreviation for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, \u00ab\u00a0and that the DPRK will never beg for the maintenance of friendship with China, risking its nuclear program which is as precious as its own life, no matter how valuable the friendship is.\u00a0\u00bb
The commentary specifically targeted the People’s Daily and the Global Times \u2014 two Chinese publications that Kim says are \u00ab\u00a0widely known as media speaking for the official stand of the Chinese party and government\u00a0\u00bb \u2014 for recent stories that have been critical of North Korea’s nuclear program.
The Korean Central News Agency commentary decried the critical articles as \u00ab\u00a0just a wanton violation of the independent and legitimate rights, dignity and supreme interests of the DPRK and, furthermore, constitutes an undisguised threat to an honest-minded neighboring country which has a long history and tradition of friendship.\u00a0\u00bb
That friendship has been a point of contention between China and the U. S., which have long harbored differing views on how to grapple with North Korea’s missile tests and nuclear developments. While it has signed on to U. N. sanctions against the North, China has sought to defend Pyongyang from the worst of the international pressure, fearing the prospect of a destabilized nuclear neighbor.
Lately though, as North Korea has opened the year with several high-profile missile tests, China has shown signs of frustration with dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime. In February, for instance, Beijing banned coal from the North, which conducts an estimated 90 percent of its trade with China and relies on coal as its top export. The move marked a significant shift for China, which had been using an exception in the U. N. sanctions \u2014 often known as the \u00ab\u00a0livelihood loophole\u00a0\u00bb \u2014 to keep its coal imports flowing.
The Trump administration has adopted a hard-line stance toward North Korea \u2014 notably installing a missile defense system in the South and warning of \u00a0\u00bb major, major conflict \u00a0\u00bb with the North \u2014 and it has been angling to get the cooperation of the North’s greatest ally.
So far, China has publicly played the role of conciliatory peacemaker, and the country’s response to the KRNA commentary was no different.
\u00ab\u00a0China’s position on developing friendly, good-neighborly relations with North Korea is also consistent and clear, \u00a0\u00bb Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Gang Shuang told reporters, according to Reuters .
Nevertheless, the commentary marks a rhetorical escalation for the North.
\u00ab\u00a0It has been a long-established tradition between North Korea and China that even if they held grudges against each other, they didn’t voice them in public, \u00a0\u00bb Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at a South Korean think tank, told The New York Times . \u00ab\u00a0This shows that the current North Korea-China relations are bad enough for both sides to break that tradition.\u00a0\u00bb
And the commentary displayed little hesitation in breaking it, leveling a thinly veiled threat at Beijing in its final lines:
\u00ab\u00a0China had better ponder over the grave consequences to be entailed by its reckless act of chopping down the pillar of the DPRK-China relations.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n