China proposes emergency meeting on Korea tensions

By DAVID GUTTENFELDER and JEAN H. LEE, Associated Press David Guttenfelder And Jean H. Lee, Associated Press –

EONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea – China tried Sunday to defuse tension over a recent North Korean attack on South Korea by proposing an emergency meeting in Beijing, hours after the U.S. and South Korea launched naval war games in a united show of force.

Beijing's top nuclear envoy called for the meeting among the six nations involved in the stalled North Korean nuclear disarmament talks to calm tempers over North Korea's artillery barrage last Tuesday that killed four people on South Korea's front-line island of Yeonpyeong.

Nuclear envoy Wu Dawei said in a statement issued in Beijing that the international community, particularly members of the six-party talks — the two Koreas, Japan, the U.S., China and Russia — were deeply concerned about recent developments. He called for an emergency meeting of chief nuclear negotiations in China in early December.

However, it was unclear whether the proposal would be accepted. Seoul and Washington have resisted restarting the disarmament-for-aid talks until Pyongyang shows a concrete commitment to denuclearization.

more at link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101128/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_clash

Why do they need help with their own creation? Let China rein in Kim Jung Il - at their own expense - without dragging other parties to the table.

Now that I've got that mini-rant out of the way, I want to express my desire that this situation gets resolved without escalation. Despite the cock-sure attitude of some who insist that NK would become a smoking crater if they launched an offensive, the cost of obliterating NK would be horrendous by any measure.

The big question I have right now is who is calling the shots in Pyongyang. Kim Jung IL appears to have passed on the power to his son and from the scant reports and pictures, it looks like he's been out of the loop for a while...all the boozin' and doping caught up with him. It's similar to the power vacuum that appeared when Kim's father passed in '94 and led to the start-up of the nuclear program. The structure of the party and power structure in that country is so Byzantine it's hard to know whose really in charge and what their motives are. And my bets no one is more confused that China.

China's in a precarious situation as their economic and cultural ties to the South are far stronger than with the North but they're the North's lifeline for the basics...without their support millions would suffer far worse than they already are. Usually these incidents end up with some kind of deal between the three parties for money and/or goods that keep the regime in Pyongyang going. I'm hoping this is just another such incident.

The other day I say a documentary on the Korean War with a Chinese commander saying why they got involved...seeing the North as a buffer from what they feared (and rightly so) an American invasion of China itself. That's not the case now...any NK attack on the South would be without the support of both China and Russia. While the North could do a lot of damage in the initial stages, the South has built a strong military and the corruption in the North could see that regime fold as its supplies and moral run thin. Hopefully the leaders in Pyongyang know this to be the reality...and are just sabre rattling to get attention, nothing more.

Cheers...

Hyundai, Samsung, and Wal-Mart have more negotiating leverage.