Beijing's lack of
faith in rule of Kim Jong-un exposed in contingency plans to detain key North
Korean leaders, set up border refugee camps and respond to "foreign
forces"
China has drawn up
detailed contingency plans for the collapse of the North Korean government,
suggesting that Beijing has little faith in the longevity of Kim Jong-un’s
regime.
Documents drawn up by planners from
China’s People’s Liberation Army that were leaked to Japanese media include
proposals for detaining key North Korean leaders and the creation of refugee
camps on the Chinese side of the frontier in the event of an outbreak of civil
unrest in the secretive state.
The report calls for stepping up monitoring
of China’s 879-mile border with North Korea.
Any senior North Korean military or
political leaders who could be the target of either rival factions or another
“military power,” thought to be a reference to the United States, should be
given protection, the documents state.
According to Kyodo News, the Chinese
report says key North Korean leaders should be detained in special camps where
they can be monitored, but also prevented from directing further military
operations or taking part in actions that could be damaging to China’s national
interest.
The report suggests “foreign forces”
could be involved in an incident that leads to the collapse of internal
controls in North Korea, resulting to millions of refugees attempting to flee.
The only route to safety the vast majority would have would be over the border
into China.
The Chinese authorities intend to
question new arrivals, determine their identities and turn away any who are
considered dangerous or undesirable.
“This only underlines that all the
countries with a stake in the stability of north-east Asia need to be talking
to each other,” Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for
Global Affairs, told The Telegraph.
“What we have learned from the collapse
of other dictatorships – the Soviet Union, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya – is that
the more totalitarian the regime, the harder and faster they fall,” he added.
“This is why we need contingency plans
and I am sure that the US and South Korea have extensive plans in place, but
the release of Chinese measures is new,” he said.
Okumura believes that the timing of the
leak of the study is significant, given that China can have been expected to
have similar contingency plans in place for the past two decades that North
Korea has been teetering on the edge of implosion.
The release of the study comes just days
after Beijing issued a thinly veiled warning to Pyongyang, ahead of a fourth
anticipated nuclear test, that China would “by no means allow war or chaos to
occur on our doorstep.”
China, which is North Korea’s sole
remaining significant supporter, also refused to export any crude oil over its
border to the North in the first three months of the year.
By Julian Ryall, Tokyo (TheTelegraph/영국 텔레그라프)
May 05, 2014
