“He then went into the history of China and Korea. Not North Korea, Korea. And you know, you’re talking about thousands of years . . . and many wars. And Korea actually used to be a part of China. And after listening for 10 minutes, I realized that it’s not so easy.”
— President Trump, interview with the Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2017.
Among all the topics that have been hot button issues in Sino-American relations lately, few are as volatile as North Korea. Defense analysts on both sides of the Pacific have feared that a misstep leading to war was almost imminent. At least that was the case, until Kim's shocking about-face early in 2018 wherein he said he was ready to meet with Washington, and the full cessation of his nuclear program was (allegedly) on the table.
Of course, there are thousands of analysts who say (far from illogically) that North Korea is just doing what it has always done: coming to the table to get concessions from the US in return for ending a tantrum they started. It's a game they've been playing for decades, so it's not impossible to believe that's what they're doing this time, but I can't help thinking there may be a different explanation. Simply put, I think the Turkey in Pyongyang is finally starting to realize why the Farmers in Beijing bring food every day (and I'm not just using "turkey" in the pejorative manner here).
Let's start with the quote above. Donald Trump got absolutely lambasted for that statement by more than a hundred media outlets. Even the South China Morning Post reprinted Washington Post's article on it (which is doubly ironic: a Chinese State Media outlet berating Trump for carelessly repeating a Zhonghua Nationalist lie fed to him by the Chinese government). But what none of those media outlets seemed to notice was one simple obvious fact: Trump never made this assertion himself. He was echoing what Xi Jinping, an unabashed Zhonghua Nationalist with a history of aggression and expansionism (not to mention revisionism), said during their meeting.
First, let's examine Kim's recent statements. Essentially, after months of ranting and raving including some threats to nuke various US cities ranging from Guam to L.A. to D.C, Kim took a hiatus from foaming at the mouth long enough to play nice for the Olympics. Everyone expected the vitriol to pick up where it had been paused as soon as the Olympics were over, but instead, we got a highly emotional claim that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula had been his father's dying wish. For the record, if that's true than Kim's track record so far is less than stellar, but I digress. Included was a statement that Kim wanted "security guarantees" from the United States (South China Morning Post, "North Korea"). Now, at a glance, this sounds really familiar. We went through this with Kim's father back in 2003 (Bush, Brookings). I already mentioned above that there are reasons for a sense of Deja Vu. However, this is not 2003. There's a new Kim in Pyongyang. There's a new president in Washington. But the most important difference (different in that it changes North Korea's position immensely) is that there's a new "emperor" in Beijing, an emperor who has not made any secret of his desire to re-establish the Tributary System, a system that included Chinese dominion over Korea.
China and Korea: the Han States
To begin with, let me give an extremely (almost offensively) brief crash-course in Sino-Korean history. The divided country known today as Korea is descended from a group of ancient countries occupying the Korean Peninsula and the land around it. The largest and most powerful of these was known as Goguryeo (Washburn, The Atlantic, or Kokuryo according to some scholars' interpretation of the ancient pronunciation. Kokuryo was shortened by a later emperor to Koryo, whence the Anglicized name Korea is derived. This kingdom went well beyond the Yalu River though. The majority of its land was in what is presently known as "Dongbei," the Chinese name for the provinces of Laoning and Heilongjiang (the region which was given the name Manchukuo or "Manchuria" by the Japanese). Both Koreas, the North moreso, claim that their nation is directly descended from this kingdom, which was far beyond the reach of the rather weak Chinese Empire of its day until it was absorbed by a smaller, Tang-Dynasty-backed puppet-state called Silla to the South (Washburn).
Fast forward nearly a thousand years to the end of the 19th century, the twilight years of the Qing Dynasty (a Dynasty ruled by Manchu, a tribe from outside of the previous Dynasty's holdings, hailing from a land almost in the same place as ancient Goguryeo, coincidentally enough) The Qing Empire (the nation the PRC claims to be the successor state of, despite the fact that Sun Zhongshan's openly stated mission was to oust them) rules present-day China and Mongolia, and holds dominion over a handful of "subsidiaries" including Vietnam, Kirgiz-Kazakh (present-day Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), and of course, Korea. Enter, the Japanese. In 1895, after handing the Qing Empire a crushing defeat without even breaking much of a sweat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese dictated the terms of the Shimonoseki Treaty. In China Intercontinental Press's China's Culture, Authors Shi Zhongwen and Chen Qiaosheng have this to say on the Shimonoseki Treaty.
"*In April 1895, the Qing Government was forced to sign the unequal "Treaty of Shimonoseki." By the terms of this treaty, China was obliged to recognize the independence of Korea, to cede the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Pescadores Islands to Japan; to pay huge indemnity of taels to Japan. Japan also gained many other benefits from China. This treaty severely endangered the modern society of China and exerted huge influence on the world history." (17)
Now, do you notice how "recognizing the independence of Korea" is listed there alongside Taiwan, which is considered a "core interest" of China? Do you notice the petulant tone the author uses when describing how China was forced to recognize the independence of their vassal-state? This gives a definite impression that the modern Chinese want Korea back. It should be known Chiang Kai-Chek asked for Korea to be "returned to China" along with Taiwan after WW2 (Washburn), so it's not that far-fetched. For the record, the book above was written in 2011. This by itself could be dismissed as an implied emotion generated by faulty translation, but from experience living here in Beijing I can tell you that the Chinese feel very, very strongly that they are entitled to rule Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia. A few hypernationalists have gone so far as to claim the entire Mongolian Empire is "ancient Chinese Sovereign Territory," since they claim Genghis Khan was a "Chinese National Hero," along with asserting that Australia should be theirs because Zheng He sailed there before Cook did, but I digress. One exercise in Chinese rhetorical Imperialism at a time here. However, China is not only trying to chip away at Korea's sovereignty now (or maybe that should be "the Koreas' sovereignties" at the moment, but let's not get bogged down in semantics), but they are trying in the present to undermine it in the past.
Remember Goguryeo? Well, there's been some controversy surrounding that recently. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is basically a CCP Think-tank whose job is to conjure up historical "evidence (and I put that word in quotes for good reason)" to backup whatever territorial claims China wants to make next, has engaged in a series of "studies (which is the euphemism the CCP uses for editing historical evidence to suit the purposes of the government that funded it)" known as the "Northeast Project (Luu, Sino NK)." This project, in a nutshell, is an attempt to rewrite history to say Goguryeo was part of ancient China, rather than the ancestor of modern Korea. Sounds rather, petty an insignificant, right? Well, not exactly. This is the same kind of spin the Chinese academic community puts on the Mongolian Empire to claim the Mongol "ethnic minority" was "absorbed by China's culture," rather than admitting Mongolia conquered China (Cao & Sun, China's History 133). And then, of course, we have Xi Jinping's casual remark to Donald Trump about how Korea "used to be part of China," which tips Xi's hand. And if you want to know what happens when China starts rewriting history to call a region an "ancient and inalienable part of China," just ask a Tibetan.
But the final bit of evidence that China is getting ready to take over North Korea is the troops they have put in position to do so. In a recent article I made some fun of the fact that China has only recently deployed troops to the NK border, even though the crisis to which they seemed to be responding was more than six months ago. Well, upon closer inspection, it turns out the unit China deployed there is the 78th Group Army. This unit is the apparent successor to the 16th group army, a unit responsible for entering NoKo and ahem "keeping the peace" in the event of a war.
Sending them to the border after the U.S. has redeployed most of our assets in that region into the South China Sea, seems odd timing. Don't you think?
Now this is highly speculative, but consider this. North Korea has never been more to China than a buffer (in truth, throughout history the whole peninsula was nothing more than a buffer against their paranoia about a Japanese invasion that never came until the late 19th century), but the same could be said for Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia. Given that China has expended massive resources bringing those buffer zones directly under their banner in the modern era, as well as attempting to secure naval buffer zones (Taiwan and the South China Sea), it seems China is no longer content with their buffer zones having the appearance of autonomy. I suspect they have decided North Korea would be less of a liability under direct Chinese rule, rather than indirect.
I suspect further that Kim has somehow become aware of this.
If that is the case, then his sudden change of tone could, in fact be an act of desperation to secure US / SK / Japanese protection in the event of a Chinese invasion of North Korea (which would be a historical irony almost on par with America celebrating Britain's declaration of independence from Europe in June of 2016). And of course, IF that's the case, then it may be that Kim's nuclear program is about to be a bargaining chip in the biggest deal of his career: saving himself from a firing squad after Korean reunification and being allowed to quietly live out his days somewhere out of history's way.
It's a long-shot, but it's not inconceivable.
If that's the case, would Trump agree to it?
Should he?
Could he if he wanted to, given how edgy Japan has gotten with the situation?
Works Cited
Books
Cao Dawei & Sun Yanjing. China's History. Trans. Xiao Ying, Li Li & He Yunzhao. Beijing. 2010. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1302-7
Shi Zhongwen, Chen Qiaosheng. Trans. Wang Guozheng. China's Culture. Beijing. 2011. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1298-3
From the Web
"North Korea will Denuclearise if Security Guaranteed, Says South." South China Morning Post. 6 Mar. 2018. Web. 18 Mar. 2018.
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2136013/north-korea-will-denuclearise-if-security-guaranteed-says-south
Bush, Richard C. "North Korea’s Bid for Security Pledge Could Be a Trap." Brookings. 17 Aug. 2003. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/north-koreas-bid-for-security-pledge-could-be-a-trap/
Lee, Michelle Ye Hee . "Trump’s Claim that Korea ‘Actually Used to Be a Part of China.’" The Washington Post. 19 Apr. 2017. Web. 16 Mar. 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/04/19/trumps-claim-that-korea-actually-used-to-be-a-part-of-china/?utm_term=.3291346422bd
(South China Morning Post Reprint: http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2089161/trump-claims-korea-actually-used-be-part-china-does-claim-stack)
Luu, Kenneth. "The Northeastern History Project and the Battle for the Past." 3 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.
https://sinonk.com/2012/03/03/the-northeastern-history-project-and-the-battle-for-the-past/
Washburn, Taylor. "How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today's China-Korea Relations." The Atlantic. 15 Apr. 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/how-an-ancient-kingdom-explains-todays-china-korea-relations/274986/