With China's aid, N. Korea tells Seoul it won't give in: analysts

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Feb. 5 (Yonhap) -- With its announcement of aid from China, North Korea
demonstrates its alliance with Beijing and tells South Korea's hardline
government that it won't cave in to Seoul, analysts said Thursday.
North Korean media said late Wednesday that the Chinese government has recently
decided to provide free aid to North Korea, welcoming it as "an encouragement to
the Korean people." The report followed a meeting between North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il and a senior Chinese party official last month.
With the public announcement, analysts say, North Korea is showing off the close
relationship it has with its key socialist ally. Pyongyang is also sending a
message to Seoul's Lee Myung-bak administration that it won't soften its stance
on inter-Korean relations in its search for economic aid, they said.
"North Korea is saying it will find a way out through China and won't be squeezed
by the Lee government's hardline policy," Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea studies
professor at Dongguk University, said.
Lee suspended food and fertilizer aid to the North after taking office a year
ago, rolling back the so-called "sunshine policy" of his liberal predecessors
that sought reconciliation through unconditional aid. Pyongyang retaliated by
threatening an "all-out confrontational posture" against Seoul and upped the
stakes last week by declaring it was unilaterally scrapping peace agreements with
the South.
Seoul officials have asserted North Korea will return to dialogue at some point
when its economy shrinks to a critical level.
Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean
affairs, reiterated that policy on Thursday. "We'll provide aid when the North
asks for it."
Scott Snyder, author of "China's Rise and the Two Koreas," said Pyongyang may be
demonstrating China's increasing economic influence over the North to stoke
concerns in Seoul.
"The message is probably designed to exploit South Korean fears that China has
become economically dominant in North Korea," Snyder, director of the Center for
U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation in Washington, said in an email.
North Korea is seeking expanded economic input from the outside to meet its
internal political objectives, he noted. Pyongyang has set 2012, the 100th
anniversary of the birth of the nation's founder, Kim Il-sung, as the target year
in building a "great, powerful and prosperous nation."
The North's media did not specify the amount or kind of Chinese assistance, but
officials say Beijing will likely send food and oil, both of which North Korea is
heavily short of. The U.N. World Food Program estimates that a quarter of the
North's 23 million people need outside food aid.
Paik Hak-soon, a senior research fellow with the Sejong Institute, an independent
think tank, said China likely offered to help rebuild the North's frail
infrastructure.
Given the significance the two countries attach to the relationship between their
political parties, the visit by Wang Jiarui as head of the Chinese Communist
Party's international department is so significant that Beijing would not have
stopped at just providing emergency aid, Paik noted.
"The free aid means not only food and oil but a comprehensive willingness of
China to cooperate with the North in rebuilding its economy," Paik said.
"Internationally, there are nuclear and missile problems. But inside North Korea,
everything is about economic reconstruction," Paik said.
North Korea's economy was just 2.8 percent of South Korea's in terms of gross
national income in 2007, according to Seoul's central bank.
Visits to Pyongyang by Chinese senior officials have usually been followed by
free aid from China. Beijing helped build a glass factory in the North after
Chinese parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo visited Pyongyang in 2003.
Snyder said China had used economic incentives as a centerpiece of its diplomacy
to encourage North Korea not to take actions contrary to Beijing's interests, but
that policy was withdrawn following North Korean nuclear and missile tests in
2006.
China "now attempts to withhold or delay some of its promised assistance until
North Korea has demonstrated tangible actions to cooperate with or acknowledge
Chinese objectives," he said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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