As Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, who completes one year as First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea on April 11, 2013, uses North Korea’s power of escalatory rhetoric to threaten the region with the danger of a nuclear war if its demands are not met, there is increasing nervousness not only among North Korea’s perceived adversaries such as the US, South Korea and Japan, but also in its traditional friend next door, namely, China.
Does Kim realise the implications of the threats which he has been holding out against his adversaries? Does he realise that if he carries out his threats or if he loses control of the situation under the irrational force of his rhetoric, he would be seriously endangering not only the national interests and security of his own country, but also those of North Korea’s traditional friends such as China?
Even Fidel Castro, in a recent column for a Cuban paper for which he writes now and then, has pointed out the likely dangers to North Korea’s traditional friends if the situation in the Korean peninsula gets out of control. He has not named the traditional friends of North Korea, but it is apparent he was having in mind China and Russia.
The government and party-controlled media in China has been increasingly—initially indirectly, now directly— reflecting the concerns in China over the developing situation in the Korean peninsula in the wake of the recent North Korean nuclear and missile tests and the new sanctions sought to be imposed against it under pressure from the US.
The Chinese concerns are reflected very clearly in two commentaries carried by the People’s Daily and the Global Times, both run by the Communist Party of China, on April 11, coinciding with the first anniversary of Kim Jong-Un’s leadership of the party
The People’s Daily commentary, explaining China’s policy of not allowing trouble-making at its doorstep, said: