Pictured above is North Korea’s Rajin (Rason) Port which borders the Tumen (Duman) River, a key crossing point between Russia and North Korea for refugees from the Hermit Kingdom.

A Chinese company recently gained a 10-year lease on the port’s full-time use (kudos and nice catch NKeconWatch!) which now enables manufacturers in the PRC’s Jilin Province – a strongly ethnic Korean part of the country — direct access to the Pacific Ocean. Yay! Incidentally, Russia also gained a 50-year lease on the same facility, but that didn’t score as much fanfare. Wonder why…

So why in tarnation is this significant?

Well, for one, this hacks another chip off North Korea’s recalcitrant block, a clear sign of opening up of some sort. It also signals to China’s Politburo and the world at large that the country is roiling – and quite likely hobbling badly – and via the new lease is jonesing for trade activity within its borders, albeit with the expected restrictions (the port area is fenced off and heavily guarded, as per DPRK usual).

Also, it could be Bam Bam (Kim Jong-il)-styled quid pro quo, a bouffant post-stroke man who desperately knows that his country’s mad nuclear ambitions are majorly on the skids. Opening up Pacific ports like Rajin might be just one of the ways in the Kim bag of tricks to reinvigorate his diabolical program. Since the DPRK prevents UN weapons inspectors from entering its Yongbyon Radioactive Zone – sorry, peaceful nuclear power facility — to see what the North Koreans are “double double toil and trouble-ing” in their nuclear witches’ brew, no one knows for certain whether the North Koreans have their nuclear delivery mechanism or not. Which  basically means that they might have just enough power to detonate a nuclear bomb…on themselves. That’s what I call progress, baby!

More importantly, this might signify the first real attempt on the part of China to establish a bona fide colony of its own in a Chinese version of wartime Japan’s “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Significant, because China has never really expressed colonial ambitions of its own and is adamant in refuting all Western attempts to frame its present African resource extraction forays and other infrastructure investments there as neo-colonialism, rather than an irrefutable win-win for nations like Nigeria, Zambia, Congo, Algeria, and Angola and itself. China and Africa’s post-colonial republics and dictatorships are like brothers for all time!

Does North Korea Make for Good Chinese Colonial Turf?

Rather than express my knee-jerk personal opinion – as in, who wouldn’t want to see the dismantling of the Kim Farm (i.e. DPRK) and its associated tyrannical structures and edifices – let’s enumerate the facts for y’all so that we can decide together, objectively-like:

• North Korea as SEZ = Special Economic Zone: It’s been years since the last SEZ was consecrated in China, and we all know only too well what became of that once pastoral village of Shenzhen, just across the former border with Westernized Hong Kong/Xiang gang. Shenzhen Fishing Village exploded into a megalopolis of 10 million souls during its subsequent two decades of prosperity through the twin mechanisms of trade and manufacturing. South Korea (ROK) already trades robustly with their Chinese counterparts and the two tigers enjoy healthy diplomatic relations. Most of DPRK’s original refugees to ROK even made their way south via Chinese auspices. So I can foresee no dispute between the two Asian tiger economies on the merits of creating a country-wide SEZ across North Korea’s 23 million-strong territory as a first step in bringing DPRK’s economy up to 21st-century standards. And North Korea wouldn’t be a typical colony, oh no! Since there’s nothing North Korea offers the world of hard-currency value except Vinalon or perhaps Mansudae’s Overseas Project Group’s international statue-building campaigns across Africa, the entire country is a tailor-made ripe playing field for all sorts experimentation! Indeed, there are throngs of North Koreans who wouldn’t object to this, which is why…
• Kim Jong-il and his court cronies should be given privileged asylum in an undisclosed Chinese remote location: under heavy Chinese guard, lock and key, and with privileged unrestricted access to the same Western goodies, hallucinatory drugs, rock tunes, go-go dancers, transvestite strippers, porn and snuff films, food options, visitors, and a revolving door of international dignitaries of Bam Bam’s choosing. Everything would remain the same. Bam Bam would be entitled to the very best in European medical care for his deteriorating heart condition (the result of too many benders), serenaded by Korean sirens of his choosing, and basically able live out the remainder of his days as a fat cat with honoraria. And there is precedent for this with the Shah of Iran, Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista, Idi Amin (to Saudi Arabia), General Noriega from Panama, Bokassa in Centrafrique, and Haiti’s “Baby Doc”). It will eventually happen to Raul Castro too, but that’s another story.
• Chinese-Style authoritarian iron-fisted rule would be familiar to North Koreans: Similar to the “Gang of Four” scenario in post-Mao China, North Korea would find its own scapegoats to pin the blame on for the country’s precipitous three-decade slide, initiate its own public lynching (or not) campaign, and gradually rehabilitate itself using whichever euphemistic language the Chinese colonial authorities would deem appropriate for DPRK’s unique 21st-century predicament. Rather than careening down the democratic rabbit hole whole hog, which would likely come as a cardiac-inducing shock to most denizens of DPRK, increased civic freedoms could be introduced in DPRK in a phased approach similar to the manner they were in China post-Reform and Opening. North Koreans would embrace Chinese innovation and structures in ways they do currently, albeit clandestinely and with heavy penalty, and the cloak would be raised at a snail’s pace. But the country’s opening would be inexorable. Note: even South Korea suffered under the weight of Syngman Rhee’s heavy-handed strongman rule for a decade and more, followed by the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee. So the case can be made similarly for North Korea. There is precedent on the Korean peninsula for the unfolding of a “gradual democracy.”

• North Korea as China’s economic and societal lab: Similar to Iran’s Kish Island or China’s Hainan Island, North Korea’s special economic status would permit China to try things there that it wouldn’t anywhere else on the Mainland. Like Hong Kong was in its heyday, sans all of the Western colonial overtones and the baggage Hong Kong carries from the Opium Wars and all the rest of the rhetoric. Entering North Korea would be visa-free for a two-week period for investors and tourists/consumers, while North Korea could be used as a staging ground before experimental technologies or key processes were fully launched in the Mainland proper. Test marketers would fall in love with the new colony. Product trials could even be initiated there. Basically anything the PRC brass wasn’t entirely sure of for the Mainland might be attempted in the new colony, in conjunction with a South Korean sign-off (to ensure a level of plausible deniability, that loveliest of Asian personality traits).
• North Korea as the first officially “neutral” country in all of Asia: All nuclear facilities and plutonium would be removed from North Korea and the territory – as part of its newly-chartered SEZ status – would be declared politically neutral. All 1 million of DPRK’s troops and special forces would be gradually de-mobbed, the DMZ between it and the South would be fully dismantled, US troops would be redeployed Stateside, and the country would become a neutral territory where China’s leaders could meet their opposite numbers from across the world community. Kind of like Rejkjavik was during the summit years, or Sweden, or even Switzerland. We’re talking about a 180-turnaround from the current bluster, bombast, and blarney barrage that is today’s Kim Farm staple.

The Verdict: Can This Actually Work?

Yes, I believe it can. I’m expressing my personal (and unqualified) opinion naturally, but I think it can work because:

• North Korea, politically-speaking, is as unstable as a maple leaf in a brisk autumn breeze. One nudge over the edge and the whole edifice crumbles. It will either implode or explode. But one thing’s for certain, its days are numbered. The experts (here, here, here, and here) all seem to agree, to one degree or another.
• DPRK’s denizens are at their wit’s edge with the corruption of the Kim Cabal and would like to put an end to Bam Bam’s gluttonous villainous ways. The Kim Cult has pillaged enough of the Kim Farm’s precious little resources and North Korea’s population is stoked for basic prosperity, even if they’re not entirely ready for a political volte face.
• geographically-speaking, North Korea is situated at the crossroads of some rather heavy hitters: Russia, Japan, South Korea (obviously), and the PRC, not to mention Uncle Sam’s outposts in Japan, on the island of Guam, and in ROK. DPRK can play host to countless summits and other confabs between the local powerbrokers as a neutral statelet, as I’ve just mentioned.
• North Korean-styled Juche “Communism” is a dead letter. It serves zero purpose on the borders of a reformed, revitalized, surging, and, moreover, “harmonized” People’s Republic of China which trades robustly both with the “flunkyist” South Koreans and those “imperialist bastard” Americans. The country’s isolation is farcical and patently illogical, if a country’s civic affairs can even be said to succumb to the science of logic.
• the future is moving too quickly. Whatever semblance of control Bam Bam and his entourage seem to believe they are exercising on the Farm, it’s just chimerical. The sham is over, kids. The bluff has been called and the internet is the new king in town.

So what do you think?

Some discussion questions for everyone to mull over:

• If DPRK implodes who takes over?
• If Kim is deposed, where will/can he abscond to?
• Is the despot Kim too embarrassing for the Chinese to take responsibility for?
• Is heir apparent Kim Jong-un as politically oblivious and intellectually inferior as his dad Bam Bam? Is he as delusional as grandfather ‘”Great Leader” Kim Il-sung? Will his Swiss education and Western youth experience save North Korea from certain calamity?
• Is there anything in North Korea worth saving? Does it have any gold, diamonds, oil, minerals, natural resource wealth, that would necessitate the West and China being forced to adopt a “kid gloves” approach to dealing with DPRK and the Kim Cult?

Lots of questions, my friends. Yet still we have zero clear answers.

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