you’re the same person who talks about democracy in iraq, aren’t you? talk of freedom from folks like you just subterfuge, no. sickening.

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And round and round we go…

these are not my original ideas as they’ve been posed to me before when the topic has come up but it’s worth asking to this crowd here: would china really want a million starved, depressed, brainwashed people on its hands with a dissolved NK rule? (ok, so maybe they would take the brainwashed but what about the others?)

secondly, how realistic is this? do you really think South Korea and the USA would just let China simply absorb North Korea without putting up a fight? even though the South seems to want to delay any reunification (and for good reason in my opinion), if the circumstances drove a sudden reunification, i doubt it SK would just let china take over. heads would surely roll…

and thirdly, if the North collapsed, wouldn’t China be more concerned about border issues as there are some areas which are sort of gray-zone in that regards?

i don’t see an NK collapse being so smooth for any side: china, south korea, russia or japan. in fact, should such an event happen, there most likely will be casaulties…

I doubt that China would simply invade. It might be ‘asked’ by a collapsing North Korea to ‘assist’ in stabilizing the country, then never leave. Something like the Syrians in Lebanon. It could ensure its control long term in some of the ways noted — such as offering jobs in other parts of China to North Koreans and moving Han Chinese into North Korean territory (something that I pointed out to the students in my history course last semester).

The initial cost even of entering because ‘requested’ would be high in terms of international relations, but that would pass fairly soon. Longer term would be the tensions here in Northeast Asia. South Koreans would be furious, Russia would be extremely nervous about losing some of its own territory, and Japan would worry about China’s military dominance in the region (which they’re already worrying about anyway).

The United States, of course, would object, but what they would do depends, in part, on relations with South Korea.

I suggest that it would be prudent for South Korea, Japan, and Russia to reach a mutual understanding now on a unified reaction if such a situation should arise in the future, and the understanding should be just vocal enough for China to ‘overhear’ it soon without loss of face.

Continuing a healthy alliance with the United States would probably also be in South Korea’s interests, it seems to me (though the Koreans would always have to worry about being asked to send troops to show its commitment to the Korean-American alliance).

One advantage of the Sunshine Policy was that it held out the possibility of making North Korea dependent upon the South, and any lessening of the North’s dependence upon China would be better for the Korean peninsula.

Jeffery Hodges

Great observance and a very good point. I might want to add, they might move out the North Koreans or let nature take over (in this case, overwhelming in numbers, Chinese genes). There will be some who will say it’s Chinese are bogeyman syndrome. But just look at the records where China took over. The results have been the same.