It might not include Mina’s boobs, but Andrei Lankov’s piece in the Asia Times on rising Chinese influence in Pyongyang is an absolute must read.
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It might not include Mina’s boobs, but Andrei Lankov’s piece in the Asia Times on rising Chinese influence in Pyongyang is an absolute must read.
21 Comments
This is somehow revolting but I hope they don’t mess with us.
Nothing you can do about it if they do. It’s an historical inevitability. As the old Chinese saying goes, “When rape is inevitable, just lie back and enjoy it.”
I thought it was Bobby Knight who said that.
Lankov is very right, as usual, and the problem is indeed that the Chinese are smart enough not to be too overt about it so that people who don’t want to believe China’s role won’t have to.
To put this in a different perspective, the United States pay roughly $22 Billion a year to its unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico, a would-be country with just under 4 million people. The majority of this money is in welfare payments (60% of the island is on welfare), and the reaminder is federal matching funds for such things as highway construction. So for a nation of 23.7 million, the Chinese are definitely getting the better bargain, even if total input eventually jumps to $22 Billion. Regarding the likelihood that a reunified Korea would also retain a U.S. presence, my gut feeling is just the opposite. Not only would the Koreans be more likely to show us the door, but many American taxpayers would be convinced that our rationale for being in Korea had ceased with reunification.
Great piece (Mina’s boobs be damned, I refer to Lankov).
Marmot, I just found at the site below that your blog is worth $115,016. Sell now.
http://blogshares.com/blogs.ph.....rmot.cc%2F
Com’on! The article does not really have much substance. Besides, did it really make a point? I prefer Mina’s boobs.
There is a foreign language boom in North Korea? What kind of boom are we talking about here? Are there book stores in North Korea that sell something besides the writings and poetry of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jeong-il? Are individual North Koreans actually shelling out counterfeit American dollars to pay for language lessons or books? Do North Koreans really have a choice as to which language they study in school? If there is a boom, wouldn’t it be a government-controlled boom?
Are those investment figures really enough to claim that “Chinese presense in North Korea is growing fast”? And is it really a surprise that China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner? Afterall, except for counterfeit dollars, missles, and illegal drugs, are North Korean goods really in much demand? And hasn’t there been a “pro-Chinese government in Pyongyang” since the 1950s? Why is Seoul just now worrying about it?
What is the “Chinese solution” that the article is talking about? China keeping North Korea afloat? Hasn’t she already been doing that for years?
I do not really understand the point of the article. Lankov hints that China may try to make North Korea a Chinese territory, but then ends up saying that she will probably just pursue economic advantage.
I think China has thought about making North Korea a Chinese territory, which may not be a bad solution. I have been told by a North Korean defector that 60 percent of the defectors in South Korea want to go back to North Korea. Even my North Korean friend even said that he has thought about going back to do cross-border trade between China and North Korea, which is illegal. When I asked him if that would be dangeous, he said that if you met the wrong border guard, you could be shot in the head, but he thinks the risks would be worth it.
It sounds to me like the border between North Korea and China is quickly disappearing, which means that North Korea may become a de facto part of China without any political adventurism.
If other North Koreans think the same way my friend does, then maybe there is a rush to learn Chinese, which would be useful for any North Korean thinking about starting a smuggling business.
Gerry–I prefer Mina’s boobs as well. Which takes nothing away from Dr. Lankov’s article, of course. I just happened to like her boobs.
Tom–That’s my old blog. Since the move, my value has come down quite a bit to 38,783. But it’s back on the upswing.
I’d question the wisdom of North Koreans learning only Chinese, as the Chinese themselves are undergoing their own English language revolution. A great leap sideways perhaps?
Interesting story in the NYT today about S. Korean missionaries and N. Koreans. I know most Marmotphiles know about this stuff, still, for those who don’t:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12.....r=homepage
So much for Korea the balancer - haven’t heard much about that particular nonsense in awhile. Wonder if the Great Pretender and the Roh-Nothings have woken up from the dream yet. Given its neighborhood, Korea doesn;t have much choice but to ally itself with someone who will fend off the local bullies. It’s obvious what Korea’s choice should be, but because they’ve got their panties in a twist about the bruthas up north and unrepentant wei-nom to the east, they can’t seem to do the right thing. MArx was right in the 18th Brumaire about hisotry proceding rounds of tragedy and farce. Korea got the tragedy of playing off one foreign power against the others in the late 19th/early 20th; and now we have the farcical version in the current fin d’siecle period. Are they setting themselves up for the next tragedy?
South Korea is not headed for tragedy. It is the North Koreans and Chinese who are experiencing tragedy under communism. Democracy will come to NK via SK. The same thing will happen to China via Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Outer Mongolia. Communism is on the retreat from the advances of democracy.
North Korea as a Chinese Autonomous Region makes perfect sense. Korean is essentially a Chinese dialect. When Korean dramas are dubbed into Mandarin, not only are there no weird gaps between lip movements and dialogue, even the lip movements are consistent with the ones for Mandarin-speakers mouthing the same dialogue. The one thing that is different is that Korean appears to be atonal and lacking the sing-song quality apparent in Chinese.
The addition of North Korea to the Chinese empire is not particularly earth-shaking - China has absorbed vassal states into the empire proper for millenia. North Korea is merely the latest candidate.
I’ve always doubted that North Korea is reformable and strongly questioned the DPRK leadership’s political will or even ability to change. Instead, they have found a new set of patrons to make juche possible for another generation! With a combination of Chinese and South Korean sponsorship — and perhaps a rehash of the Cold War scenario of competition for North Korean favor — the North Koreans won’t need to change.
Zhang Fei wrote:
North Korea as a Chinese Autonomous Region makes perfect sense.
To the Chinese, occupying and controlling any bit of land touching it “makes perfect sense.”
Korean is essentially a Chinese dialect.
Grammatically, no. Tonally, no. In terms of usage of Chinese characters, there is a relationship, but that makes Korean no more a dialect of Chinese than Japanese is (an argument that Korean and Japanese are distant dialects of each other is far less of a nonstarter).
But in terms of the overridingly important category–languages that most English speakers don’t understand–Chinese and Korean would seem to be very close.
When Korean dramas are dubbed into Mandarin, not only are there no weird gaps between lip movements and dialogue, even the lip movements are consistent with the ones for Mandarin-speakers mouthing the same dialogue.
And national conquests have occurred with far less justification than that.
The one thing that is different is that Korean appears to be atonal and lacking the sing-song quality apparent in Chinese.
Also, Koreans don’t sound like seals begging for fish when they say the number 2 several times in a row.
The addition of North Korea to the Chinese empire is not particularly earth-shaking - China has absorbed vassal states into the empire proper for millenia. North Korea is merely the latest candidate.
Again I say to every person in South Korea who can hear and heed my words: China is not our friend.
Kushibo, considering the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, the bird flu is my friend.
I like what Gerry Bevers had to say about the gradual dissapearance of the sino-nork border. With China already “recreating” the region’s history (as it lays claim to tombs that could refute their historical aspirations) it really seems to me that somewhere in the great Communist collective hive there stems a plan of absorbsion… and it’s working.
It does seem to be a possibility that the Chinese could turn the North into a sort of protectorate by supporting a puppet regime of Juche-ists, while deepening their control over the region (perhaps the way the Chinese treated Korean kingdoms in the past as vassal states). What will the unifiers in the South say to this when it becomes apparent that with growing Chinese influence, their dreams of unification will be blowing in the wind? Will they find some way to blame the US for it all?
snow: It does seem to be a possibility that the Chinese could turn the North into a sort of protectorate by supporting a puppet regime of Juche-ists, while deepening their control over the region (perhaps the way the Chinese treated Korean kingdoms in the past as vassal states). What will the unifiers in the South say to this when it becomes apparent that with growing Chinese influence, their dreams of unification will be blowing in the wind? Will they find some way to blame the US for it all?
The historical pattern of Chinese territorial expansion has been to turn vassal states into provinces. Tibet, for example, used to be a vassal state. If Japan had not conquered Korea in 1895, Korea would today be part of China. Ditto with Nepal, Burma, Vietnam, and a couple of Indian states. South Koreans shouldn’t worry about problems with unification - it is distinctly possible that North Korea will be reunified with China sometime during the 21st century.
It’s funny how these Chinese covet other lands being so disgusting wanting to make others like them. I know you have better things to worry about.
The nation of Tibet was not a vassal state of China by choice historically, and is certainly not one now despite efforts at forced Hanification and genocide. The Vietnamese in particular have historically shown their ‘willingness’ to be governed directly or otherwise by any foreign power, whether French, American, or Chinese. The Chinese military learned this the hard way most recently, in 1979.
Indian states as vassals of the Chinese? Your message may as well be titled How to Piss of the World’s Most Populous Democracy (and by 2030 the world’s most populous nation and an economic giant). Don’t go there.