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China Trade Helps Shield N. Korea
China is not just content to have the Norks as a convenient yapping dog. It is using North Korea as a colony; buying out its natural resources and using it as a captive market for cheap manufactured goods. The cash goes straight to the Nork military on their side, and to the Chinese military on their side. It's one of the more important reasons why China won't curb their dog.
Cash Aids Military, May Offset Sanctions

SEOUL -- Behaving badly hasn't hurt the bottom line in North Korea. Thanks to China, foreign trade has soared since Kim Jong Il's government began detonating nuclear bombs nearly three years ago. As U.N. sanctions mount and business between the two Koreas fizzles, North Korea's trade with China is setting new records. It rose 41 percent last year, while China's share of the North's overseas trade mushroomed to 73 percent.

In recent months, exceptional eruptions of North Korean belligerence have been attributed to the murky logic of hereditary succession as Kim, ailing since he had a stroke last year, positions his third son to take command of the communist country. Kim Jong Un is just 26, and many analysts have explained the North's missile launches, a second nuclear test in May and repeated threats of "merciless war" as a way of cementing the young man's credibility as a fearsome and deserving heir.

While that may be true -- and few outsiders really know what's up in Pyongyang -- there is another way to understand the North's willingness to antagonize much of the world: Chinese buyers of North Korean minerals don't seem to mind.
Posted by: Steve White 2009-06-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=273185