Following the recent revelation that China is supplying North Korea with aid despite the severe sanctions agreed upon by the international community at large, an old conundrum has once again resurfaced. With China willing to support North Korea, subverting negotiation tactics for immediate gain, the international solution must come up with another solution to deal with the rogue state.
China's motivation in this instance should be rather obvious. If, or when, depending on how you look at it, North Korea collapses, there will be a huge refugee population that the neighboring countries (particularly South Korea, Japan, and China) will be economically and socially unable to support. China's primary concern is avoiding this scenario, which is the source of a variety of policies, including its consistent refusal to accept escaped citizens.
As a result, the international community has a few options left to it. It can work to prevent China from continuing its support, and return to old negotiation methods. It could also work positively as with Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy, though that clearly was not very successful. It can, alternatively, ignore China's interference and attempt negotiations anyway, which seems a likely result at this point.
However, as long as these sort of negotiations continue, nothing can really change. With North Korea theoretically armed with some sort of nuclear weaponry, an intervention of any sort is really out of the question, and is even more unlikely once the refugee issue is once again raised. After all, no nations have the resources to take on such a mission in the midst of this recession, much less deal with the consequences.
In the immediate, the best solution is likely to attempt to curb China's policy away from aiding North Korea. Though the rationale is certainly coherent and logical, soft international pressure can probably prevent Beijing from taking further steps along that course. Without that crucial step, negotiations will once again be locked at a standstill.
China is a major trading partner with Myanmar, Sudan, North Korea and a number of other rogue nations. How can this be a surprise? The only surprising aspect of this is that nations continue to believe that sanctions will have any effect. I have no suggestions that I consider viable except to point out that sanctions rarely have had measurable impact.
