subject: China May Be Willing to Abandon North Korea, WikiLeaks Shows [print this page] China May Be Willing to Abandon North Korea, WikiLeaks Shows
By John Brinsley
Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- China is distancing itself from ally North Korea and has indicated a willingness to accept Korean unification under the South's control, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable provided to the Guardian by WikiLeaks.org.
South Korea's then-vice foreign minister, Chun Yung Woo, told U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens in February that young Chinese Communist party leaders don't think North Korea is a reliable ally, according to a Feb. 22 cable posted on WikiLeaks. Chun also said two unidentified Chinese officials told him they believed Korea should be unified under the South.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday said the Obama administration "strongly condemns" the unauthorized release of more than 250,000 diplomatic documents that WikiLeaks began posting two days ago. State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said she "can't provide veracity of anything WikiLeaks has released to the media," adding the agency's policy is to refrain from commenting on specific leaked materials.
The U.S. is pressing China to censure North Korea for its Nov. 23 shelling of a South Korean island that killed four people. China has avoided blaming its ally of 60 years, instead criticizing joint naval exercises by South Korea and the U.S. in the Yellow Sea that began on Nov. 28.
Chun, who is currently South Korea's national security adviser, told Stephens that China "has much less influence than most people believe" over Kim Jong Il's regime, according to the Feb. 22 cable cited in the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper.
Spoiled Child'
A separate message from Beijing said China's vice-foreign minister He Yafei in April 2009 told an American diplomat that North Korea's missile tests were designed to get the attention of the U.S. and that the government in Pyongyang was acting "like a spoiled child." Two months later, U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan Richard Hoagland sent a cable saying his Chinese counterpart, Cheng Guoping, told him North Korea was a "threat to the whole world's security," the Guardian said.
WikiLeaks.org, a nonprofit group that releases information the governments and businesses want to keep confidential, has over the past two days posted on its website what it says are secret, confidential or in some cases unclassified U.S. embassy cables.
