Beijing
In early May, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il made a long anticipated trip to China – his first visit in more than four years – for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao. This trip came on the heels of an incident, more than a month prior, in which a South Korean naval vessel was drowned in the Yellow Sea.
The sinking of the 1,200 ton Cheonan, a corvette-class ship that went down on March 26, near the disputed maritime waters that separate North and South Korea, with 104 crewmembers aboard, has the South Koreans attributing the cause to a North Korean-made CHT-02D model naval torpedo fired by one of the North Korea’s infamous midget submarines. Some 46 South Korean sailors are still missing and presumed dead. A team of 24 investigators from the U.S., Australia, UK, and Sweden assisted South Korea with identifying the model and origin of the torpedo.
The torpedo used to sink the South Korean vessel was developed in North Korea, but its model is based on the Yu-3G torpedo that was exported by the Chinese in the 1980s, and was later brought to North Korea. China and the USSR (and subsequently Russia) have historically supplied North Korea with much of its weaponry, with the North’s military often reverse-engineering these designs and then producing its own copies. The famous Nodong and Taepodong ballistic missiles that have been test-launched by North Korea on several occasions were both developed by copying the basic design of the Soviet-era SS-1 Scud missile.
Beijing denies that there is any correlation between the rise in tensions in the Korean peninsula and Kim’s trip to China. “These are two separate events,” said Zhang Qiyue, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. There is a small – and equally rare – kernel of truth in Qiyue’s statement. It is highly likely that Kim was summoned and given a dressing down for creating a diplomatic incident that will now set off calls for more international sanctions, as well as other possible responses by South Korea. But it is not just the sinking of the Cheonan that has Beijing worried about what is happening inside the “Hermit Kingdom.”
There are a number of signs that China’s rulers are worried about the North Korea regime’s stability in general, and its ruler’s physical condition and mental state in particular.
One of the key indicators that Beijing lacks confidence in Kim’s health is, despite the rogue leader’s last journey to China in his luxurious armored train in early 2006, this overdue May 2010 journey to China was called an “unofficial” visit. “Declaring the trip to be an unofficial one shows that there are concrete problems with Kim’s mobility,” a long-time North Korea watcher based in Beijing told me. “By not billing this as an official state visit, Kim is relieved of requirements for reviewing a military honor guard and making other ceremonial appearances. The idea is to limit the need for him to engage in public activities that could physically tax him or – even worse – reveal the full extent of any aftereffects of the stroke he has previously suffered.”
Indeed, very little video was released of the reclusive leader’s visit, but the few fragments seen on Japanese television showed Kim visibly limping when he walked. The images made one wonder how many days he has left in this world.
