The relationship between China and North Korea

0:00This message comes from IXL, providing an online learning environment intended to keep students' skills sharp over summer vacation. The platform covers core subjects and adapts to each child's pace. Receive 20 % off at IXL.com slash NPR. Today on State of the World, the relationship between China and North Korea.

0:25You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Tuesday, June 9th. I'm Greg Dixon. For the first time in nearly seven years, China's leader Xi Jinping visited North Korea. Xi was given a lavish welcome with a brass band and children waving flags. The two neighboring countries have had an alliance for decades, but the summit between them comes as North Korea has been prioritizing its diplomatic relations with Russia. To understand the significance of this meeting, we're going to hear from NPR's China correspondent Jennifer Pack and South Korea correspondent Anthony Kuhn.

1:07They spoke to Mary Louise Kelly. So, Anthony, I will let you kick us off with a basic question. What was Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, trying to achieve in this meeting with President Xi? It looks like he was trying to recalibrate and rebalance his ties between his traditional ally China and his newer one, Russia. and he appears to have done that. He signed a mutual defense pact with Russia two years ago, and he sent troops to help them fight Ukraine. But Kim told Xi Jinping that developing ties with China is now his country's top strategic undertaking. Now, Kim is usually quite careful not to offend China, but just before Xi arrived in Pyongyang, Kim unveiled a previously unknown uranium enrichment facility, and he claimed that he had more than doubled nuclear fuel production in the past five years and would increase his missile production capacity by 150 percent in the next five years.

2:03And some experts see this as a bold bid to force Xi Jinping to tacitly accept North Korea as a de facto nuclear state. And indeed, neither side in the summit publicly mentioned the nuclear issue, so some experts believe Kim succeeded. Okay, a bid to force China to tacitly accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Jennifer, For hopping on that, is China worried about North Korea's nuclear program? China thinks that North Korea's nuclear issue is mainly a problem for the U.S. and South Korea, more than for itself. And that's according to a nuclear expert, Tong Zhao, at the think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

2:39He says China doesn't see why it needs to stick its neck out on behalf of the U.S. or South Korea. Especially when China now focuses on confrontation with the United States. Same time, he said, by China tacitly accepting the reality of a nuclear North Korea, it could also increase the risk of other countries in the region wanting their own nuclear capabilities, and then pushing Japan and South Korea to strengthen their security relations with Washington. Mary Louise, let's just remember that this has been actually happening for some time. In 2023, then-President Biden met with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, and they pledged to step up three-way military cooperation.

3:20And that was a key factor in Moscow and Beijing's decision that year to stop calling for North Korea's denuclearization. Interesting. To broaden this out a little bit, if Kim Jong-un feels confident, as you seem to be telling me, about his relationships with both Moscow and Beijing, what might that tell us about his ambitions going forward? Well, Kim is looking quite confident now that foreign leaders really have no choice but to accept his nuclear status, which could make him look like less of the head of a rogue regime. I spoke to Chu Jae-woo, who is a China foreign policy expert at Kyong-hee University just outside Seoul, and he described Kim Jong-un's growing ambitions like this.

4:03He liked to take North Korea to become a normal state. And in the diplomatic context, He was really specific about North Korea playing a leadership role and contributor to the building of new international order. So when China, Russia and North Korea say a new international order, they mean a fair and just order in contrast to, say, the U.S. and Western-led international order, which to them has always been about imperialism and unilateralism. I mean, from where you sit in Shanghai, Jennifer, China's view on this closer relationship that North Korea has been forging with Russia, how do they view it?

4:46Well, China prizes stability above all, and that includes North Korea's regime not collapsing, going into famine, having refugees pouring over its borders. But China is skeptical of warmer ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. To Beijing, North Korea's pivoting to Russia may reduce China's influence on North Korea. This is important for Beijing, especially on the nuclear issue. It also explains why Xi went to Pyongyang to remind North Korea that the two countries' bond goes all the way back to the Korean War. Well, and I thank you for circling back to the nuclear issue because that's where I want to land us.

5:24Anthony, it sounds as though we are now seeing two major world powers, China and Russia, accepting or seeming to accept North Korea's nuclear status. Does that open the door to the U.S. needing to do so down the line? Well, the official line out of Washington, Seoul, and other foreign capitals is that the international consensus is still for denuclearization, and that's what they're going to stick to. But experts believe that as more governments see denuclearizing North Korea as increasingly unrealistic, pressure on Pyongyang to do so is easing up. Now, experts have argued for years that right now the only option is for the U.S.

6:05to start not with denuclearization, but with arms control to freeze Pyongyang's nuke production, then get them to reduce their arsenal in exchange for security guarantees and sanctions relief. But that would require actual diplomatic negotiations, which right now does not appear to be very high on either Washington or Pyongyang's agendas. It's reporting from NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul and Jennifer Pack in Shanghai. Thanks, you two. You are welcome. Thank you.

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