China beleaguered by two Koreas

As the enduring conflict in Korea produces a Cold War defector drama in Beijing, China is placed in a most difficult diplomatic position. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin focuses on China's dilemma in sustaining its two Koreas policy.

HONG KONG (JP): As top Chinese officials are now forced to arbitrate over the defection of a high North Korean official to the South Korean Embassy in Beijing, China is hemmed in by the hard choices it has to make regarding the two Koreas.

"Beijing is well and truly caught between a rock and a hard place" as one diplomat glibly put it upon hearing the news that Hwang Jang-yop, a member of the secretariat of the Korean Workers (communist) Party (KWP) had taken refuge in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing on Feb. 12, along with one of his aides, and had requested asylum for them both.

China may not appreciate the biting irony of the position in which it is now placed. For years, it has opposed all those who even hint at a two Chinas policy -- recognition of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Now Beijing is placed in an excruciatingly difficult position as it tries to sustain its two Koreas policy.

On the one hand, China has been anxious to sustain its relations with communist North Korea, ever since it went against North Korea's interests and recognized South Korea in 1992.

China's communist leaders have a strong political interest in seeing that the two communist states on its borders -- North Korea and Vietnam -- do not go the same way as the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist countries.

But whereas the Vietnamese communists have followed China's example in trying to marry communist rule with capitalist economics, North Korea has gone its rigidly Stalinist way under the juche philosophy (self-reliance and independence), formulated in large part by the defector Hwang, but attributed to North Korean leaders, the late President Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il.

China has sometimes supported North Korean positions, as when it followed the North in withdrawing from the Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom. China could have continued to honor its separate signature on the 1953 armistice agreement, but chose instead to please Pyongyang.

Yet China has long since ceased to try and subsidize North Korea isolationism, as it used to do in the old days of Sino- Soviet competition for Pyongyang's favor. The best example of this tendency has been as famine conditions developed in North Korea in the last two years. China waited, offering only shipments for cash, and let South Korea and Japan first supply sizable rice aid, before making some considerable donations of its own.

Meanwhile China has pursued its economic interest in quickly developing economic ties with South Korea's generally thriving economy. Things have not always gone smoothly, as when the projected partnership between China and South Korea to jointly produce a 100-seater passenger plane fell apart on the two nation's conflicting perceptions of their respective importance.

But Sino-South Korean trade has quickly developed to the point where it dwarfs trade between North Korea and China. The graphics for Sino-South Korean and Sino-North Korean trade look roughly the same -- until you notice that the trade with the South is measured in billions while that with the North is measured in millions.

So in these and other ways China has been able to pursue its longer term interest by having two Koreas to play off against each other, rather than having one united and stronger Korea as a neighbor.

Seoul and Pyongyang both fully recognize and intensely dislike the implicit power politics preference of China and Japan -- and perhaps the United States and Russia, too, though this is debatable -- for a disunited Korea.

Still, they simply cannot object as strongly to China's two Koreas policy as China objects to any nation espousing a two Chinas policy. South Korea pursues China ties in order to score points off North Korea. North Korea desperately continues to try and get China's recognition of the North as the only legitimate Korean state.

With this unprecedented high-level defection, China is being forced to choose between the two Koreas as never before. South Korea dispatched some high-level officials to try and arrange Hwang's transfer to South Korea, and they arrived in Beijing on Feb. 13. The South Korean and Chinese Foreign Ministers have met at the Asia-Europe ministerial meet in Singapore.

North Korea quickly fell back on the allegation that Hwang did not defect but was instead kidnapped by the South Koreans.

One Chinese choice was quickly made. On Wednesday evening, once they heard of Hwang's defection, ten North Korean officials tried to enter the South Korean embassy in Beijing. It is not clear whether there was any altercation. What is clear is that the Chinese immediately threw a strong police cordon around the embassy to make sure that the civil war between the two Koreas did not erupt on China's territory.

Nevertheless some North Korean officials in their cars are maintaining a vigil outside the South Korean embassy, presumably to try and make sure that Hwang does not leave it.

So far the main Chinese response has been to try and pour oil on the troubled Korean waters, and in the process Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang engaged in some uncharacteristic wishful thinking. His statement on Feb. 13 said China hoped that "all sides concerned will proceed with a view of the whole situation, act with a cool head and deal properly with the situation so as to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula".

Apart from that, the initial indications are that the Chinese will try and play for time, in the hope that the problem will go away. On the one hand, China certainly does not want North Korea throwing its weight around at the South Korean embassy.

On the other hand, Beijing is almost as certainly irritated with the South Koreans for making the affair public so loudly and so soon. Other (lower-level) North Korean defections through China have tended to be publicized only when those defecting reached South Korea.

Of course, from the South Korean viewpoint, the publicity about Hwang serves to put pressure on China. The Chinese probably feel that, to the contrary, it limits their room for maneuver.

Since Hwang is already on South Korean territory in the embassy, there is not much the Chinese can do. Chinese officials could ask to see Hwang to find out for themselves, at first hand, whether North Korea's kidnapping charge has any merit. The South Koreans could conceded this as a diplomatic courtesy. But the North Koreans might prefer that the kidnapping charge remains unanswered rather than to be told categorically by China that Hwang has definitely defected.

Should Hwang subsequently seek to leave the South Korean embassy and to leave China on his North Korean passport, China could seek to apprehend him and return him to North Korea. But any such move would not merely threaten to badly damage Sino- South Korean ties. It would also further tarnish China's image in international opinion since it would be widely assumed that Hwang was being sent home to his execution.

The easiest way out of the potential impasse would be for Hwang and the aide who accompanied him to be given alternative travel documents. The Chinese could then look the other way, and assure North Korea that as far as they knew the two defectors had not left the country.

However, given the sustained North Korean vigil outside the embassy -- there has already been one high-speed chase by the North of a car which left the embassy containing South Koreans -- plus the demands North Korea is said to be making to the Chinese, some explicit Chinese cooperation may be required by the South Koreans before Hwang can safely reach Seoul.

Whatever happens, or is allowed to happen, it seems certain that China's relations with one or other of the two Koreas will be severely affected.

Again the irony is that China itself is now being asked a question which it has often posed to those seeking to retain ties with Taiwan -- which is the real Korea?

Undoubtedly some in Beijing will argue that forcing Hwang back to face North Korea's tender mercies will help sustain the reality of two Koreas. Other Chinese officials will probably assert that China has no alternative but to help South Korea, since this defection drama signifies that there may be only one Korea before very long.