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by vorg 3183 days ago
>Perhaps China wants to annex NK

If China was considering this type of thing, it would be a split of NK territory between itself and South Korea. China would be holding secret talks with South Korea about militarily assisting them to reunite with the North, in return for China getting some of North Korea's territory. After the initial show of strength, China would offer top NK leaders and military officers lifelong residence in that annexed territory, with immunity from deportation. The U.S. right now is probably trying to stop such secret talks from starting, probably by impressing on the SK govt just how much their standard of living would be impacted by reuniting with the North. Of course, China would be using this as leverage in the secret negotiations to gain as much NK territory as possible.

1 comments

Why would the US care? At this point, the situation is an anchor around our neck. Talks behind our backs are unlikely to happen due to SK's deep distrust of China, whose fault it is that Korean war ended in stalemate (after US intervention), as well as SK's deep military integration with the US.

The Kim dynasty has shown zero inclination to give up power, which would make such a concept a nonstarter. If DPRK could be solved by all parties other than the Kim regime (say, by decapitation of the regime and containment of the resultant chaos), it would be a done deal. Everyone's been hoping the regime would collapse before becoming a credible nuclear threat, but that hasn't happened and the temperature keeps rising.

I think we ultimately will live to see this play out. I have to assume it's being negotiated even now, because it will be require unprecedented coordination to defuse NK without massive civilian deaths in Seoul or a refugee crisis in Manchuria.

As far as I know, China does not want NK territory. The last thing they need is an extremely insular ethnic group to integrate. They want containment of NK and less US presence in Asia. They also want Taiwan, but I think a much diminished US presence on the peninsula would be more than enough for them.