Chinese primary school students are being brainwashed into boycotting South Korean snacks

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently put it, the USA and North Korea are like “two accelerating trains coming toward each other, with neither side willing to give way”.

The stated objective of the joint exercises is to “pre-emptively “detect, defend, disrupt and destroy” North Korean nuclear and missile facilities when an attack is imminent, in addition to defending South Korea”. But this report has not yet been confirmed by U.S. intelligence.

That raises the prospect of a return to the so-called Sunshine Policy adopted from 1998 to 2008 that emphasized engagement with North Korea, an approach that Park’s predecessor dropped because it failed to stop Pyongyang’s weapons development. This modus operandi was evident in the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.

The Chinese government is acutely concerned at the prospect of war on its doorstep involving its ally, North Korea.

South Korea’s political upheaval has also created an opening for China. He envisions them as provocative and wants them stopped. Those who follow the Korean peninsula regret that China’s hard-line position will thaw relations with Seoul that are contrary to Chinese interests vis-à-vis North Korea, Japan and the U.S. Some outside of the government thought that the Chinese leadership had been unrealistically optimistic about the potential to harden opposition to Thaad in the Korean progressive camp. Korea’s decision to deploy USA interceptors targeting North Korean missiles has Beijing resorting to this pattern of misbehavior.

North Korea declared itself a nuclear power in 2005.

Beijing does not like any of its options vis-à-vis North Korea, but the world can not afford for China to remain complacent.

The United Nations has implemented several rounds of sanctions against North Korea over the past decade in response to its missile launches and nuclear programme, but to no avail. Current frontrunner Moon Jae-in, of the Democratic Party of Korea, has said that it should have been left to the next president to make a decision on THAAD, but he’s been coy about what he would do as president now. So, for any future negotiations to become fruitful, China must enter the process as a guarantor of Kim’s commitment to the specifics of those negotiations.

As Asia’s fourth-largest economy continues to reel in the aftermath of Friday’s landmark ruling that made Park Geun-hye the country’s first president to be ousted via impeachment, attention has partly shifted from Park to the question of her successor.

The North sees the massive war games as a military provocation and, last Monday, an angry Pyongyang test-fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan in answer.

The THAAD deployment will top the agenda for Secretary of State Roy Tillerson’s trip this week to Japan, South Korea and China.

The first elements of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system arrived in the Republic of Korea on March 6, 2017.

“Accordingly, it should be cleared whether or not China has an intention to attack Korea by force of arms in case that Korea does not withdraw the THAAD deployment”, it insisted.

Last year North Korea launched 21 ballistic missiles and carried out two nuclear tests. US officials are now weighing their options, and last week, the USA ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, stated that when it comes to dealing with the growing threats from North Korea, “all options are on the table”.

Moon has a “more sophisticated stance” than Park on Thaad, according to Shen Shishun, a senior researcher at the China Institute of International Studies under China’s Foreign Ministry.

From Kim’s Jong-un’s perspective, these complications are quite welcome, because they would underscore to Washington the necessity of engaging his regime in a series of negotiations.

The news of a possible new drone deployment comes amid spiraling tensions on the Korean peninsula, with the latest flare-up coming last week, when large-scale US-South Korean military exercises called Foal Eagle kicked off, which are to run through the end of April.