Korea: Up to China

There is going to be a conflict [between North Korea and] South Korea and the US, I would say, in the near future. And North Korea is going to lose and collapse. China is going to have a unified Korea on its border anyway. China needs to realize the fact and needs to allow North Korea to collapse sooner, rather than later. Because the later North Korea collapses the greater the conflict is going to be, the greater the damage is going to be in the entire region. So, China really needs to be turning off the aid to North Korea.

--Brian Myers, Prof. International Studies, Dongseo University, Busan, South Korea

Myers is quoted in an article by Sunny Lee, a South Korean reporting from Beijing on the Chinese-Korean relationship. Myers provides a blunt look at the future. Who, however, would take issue with his prediction that sooner or later, North Korea will collapse, and Korea will emerge a unified nation? And if that is the future, isn’t China better off as part of the solution, rather than the problem?

Seems to me South Korea should be working with China now, reassuring China a unified Korea can be neutral, foreign base-free, and nuclear free, if China will cooperate by—essentially—forcing the pace of reunification. One would call this the Austrian solution, modeled on the 1955 treaty between Austria and the “Big Four” of the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, and France that made Austria free, united, but neutral.

This time, (South) Korea and the “Big One,” China, make it work. The U.S., Japan, and Russia could join in.