I've mentioned this in another comment, but you're severely underestimating the real relationship between North Korea and China. For the government, maybe it is only a strategic relationship, but if you talk to anyone who grew up in China there is a real feeling of kinship with the people that live in NK.
For a long time there has been a lot of cultural exchange between the nations and many Chinese near the border are indistinguishable culturally from North Koreans.
An attack on North Korea, even if a justifiable retaliation, would feel like an attack on the Chinese people for a great many everyday people in China.
The closest analog to the US would be Canada. Most American's, especially in the North, feel that Canadians are very culturally similar. Many people in far Northern states have friends and family in Canada. Overall the bond is much closer than with Mexico, which has more culture, ethnic and linguistic differences.
Imagine if Canada were ruled by a despot, who then irrationally launched a nuclear strike on another country. Even if American's were to feel that that was wrong, we would also still likely strongly defend Canadian people from aggressive retaliation. And this analogy is far from perfect, the sense I've gotten in conversations with Chinese about North Korea is that they're much closer.
North Koreans don’t speak Mandarin, they would be loath to consider themselves as Han, they have a totally unique food culture, etc.
I honestly think it’s closer to US / Taiwan style connection than what you claim.
To go even further on the Han point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Commanderies_of_Han#His...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/03/china-redoubling-crackdo...
I've seen this mentioned in a documentary about people fleeing North Korea via China and Thailand as well, and they need to hide themselves from the Chinese as much as they do the DPRK border guards.
I lived in Beijing for a while and I can’t say I agree with this. For sure, China is an enormous country with much cultural surface area, so I could be wrong.
But this does not strike me as an obvious conclusion.
USA afraid of communisms spread. Sends MacArthur to Korea. He crushes the Korean communists. USA believes it to be a clean sweep. Mao surprise s USA with massive army encirclement of USA forces. USA forced to flee south and hold the line that became demarcation between north and south.
There is a 0% chance China would allow the USA to take NK.
They also love provoking Japan. Their entire origin story is about fighting against the Japanese in the 30s.
If NK actually launches an attack on a "western" country, full war will begin. If China decides to get involved, that's really on them. I wish it were otherwise, but that's how it is.
It is not stale in their psyche.
Yet I don't think anyone here is interested in war with Germany.
Also, have you noticed how in the US there arent really any “Saving Private Ryan”s about the Korean War?
Agreed. This, however, was not the substance of my comment.
The US would not tolerate an attack on Israel/Taiwan/others. That doesn’t mean that if China attacked Taiwan, the average American would feel like they had been attacked.
But, I think the Canada invasion analogy is also even too weak; Canada doesn’t exist because of the USA like NK does because of the CCP.
See Korean War.
I did not bother to provide it as a source, because I just found the theory entertaining, and at the same time more realistic than "we're permanently on the verge of ww3 because of a small country with nothing more than nuisance power"
I tend to agree with you that a unilateral attack on NK would cause a terrible reaction from China ; the point of the PAA theory is that such an attack would never occur, until China, for some reason, has drop support to the NK régime ('Big countries dropping support on some protege' does not look like an impossible occurrence - I'm pretty sure there are précedents.)
The NK situation is one of the many that will not be solved on a social network.
And they damn well shouldn’t.
Thats one way to call it...
Tips of the day, don't put too much trust into Youtube videos. There are just random dudes/girls who are good with a video editor. And most of the content they produce is either from Wikipedia or their own random opinion.
And for something as serious are NK I wouldn't trust anything that is said by a youtube video
I find that relationship basically a parasite and host, and now they're likely going to win for election in next year.
The fact that their population suffers famine nearly every goddamn year is just unbelievably sad.
How those people put up with it, I don't understand. They really managed to create a feudal country in a modern world. Could others do the same if left unchecked?
People en masse are willfully gullible when it comes for propaganda. Just look at the vaccine mandates.
I myself is from USSR, and when i see photos from NK i see that my past, and i really don't know how they today (or we back then) could get out of that situation until the system crumbles on its own.
>Could others do the same if left unchecked?
Do you see any other way for Afghanistan for example?
It's not just this. China doesn't want a unified, Western-friendly Korea directly on its border. They also don't want the mass refugees if NK fails.
Very questionable. If you read about the Rangoon bombing[0] the short of it is the Chinese passed on a note from the NKs to the Americans requesting trilateral talks, essentially vouching for them, just prior to the bombing. Apparently, Deng Xaiping said afterwards he'd never let 'that motherfucker' (Kim Jong Il) set foot on chinese soil as long as he lived, and apparently, KJI never did.
All of the pathways to a rational NK have outcomes that China would not like including both collapse of the North Korean state, hostility between China and NK or variations on unification between SK and NK. The only stable option is to work with NK too slowly migrate towards a modern Chinese communism approach over the span of decades through the use of aid money, advisors, economic exchange, and educational programs. This only risks periodic regression via purges within North Korea.
The cycle would go on forever, as long as China would not ditch support for NK. And of course, China would never get rid of such a powerful way to annoy everyone else.
NK would never actually attack, as it would kill their bluff and give everyone a good reason to convince China to wipe them out.
So this would be yet another episode. It's not "Mutually Assured Destruction", but "Perpetually Assured Annoyance".