North Korea's ties cool with "revisionist" China (Feature)

By Bill Smith Jun 23, 2009, 7:04 GMT

   Pyongyang - Tourists from the north-eastern Chinese border city of Dandong must now travel further if they want to try their luck in a North Korean casino.

   China suspended trips from Dandong across the Yalu river to North Korea in early 2006 because of increasingly heavy gambling by Chinese visitors, including some officials who lost public money.

   The government allowed tours from Dandong to resume in April but North Korea had reportedly demolished the border casinos, forcing gamblers to use the last remaining open gambling centre, the Pyongyang Casino.

   The Chinese croupiers in Pyongyang, who are all from Dandong, may now see more people from their home city than a few years ago. But nights surveying the green baize can still get lonely.

   During one visit in early June, three North Korean baccarat players were the only gamblers at the Macao-run casino, leaving the Black Jack tables and more than a dozen slot machines empty.

   Outside the small casino, there was little sign of action at the neighbouring massage parlour, karaoke bar and Macao Restaurant which together occupy a basement section in Pyongyang's Yanggakdo Hotel.

   'I lost 800 yuan (120 dollars). It's not too bad,' one Chinese woman told the German Press Agency dpa after she arrived from the casino the next evening to join her tour group in the hotel's 47th-floor revolving restaurant.

   The Chinese tourists are part of an apparently dwindling band of visitors to Kim Jong Il's increasingly isolated nation.

   Up to 85 per cent of seats were empty on some Air China flights between Beijing and Pyongyang earlier this month.

   People who travel regularly to North Korea have noticed some small signs of positive change, such as new roadside drink and snack stalls, with their blue and white plastic covers, along Pyongyang's main roads.

   A few more people and cars are visible on the streets, including some Mercedes, BMWs and sports-utility vehicles.

   'Such changes may not seem like much from the outside but they are radical in the context of North Korea,' tour guide Xie Jianxiao told the China Daily newspaper recently.

   Yet hopes have faded that North Korea's reclusive leaders might follow the Chinese Communist Party, which launched major economic reforms 30 years ago.

   Many visitors to Pyongyang are taken to Kim Il Sung's enormous mausoleum, or at least they see some of the many giant portraits and statues of the Great Leader or his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

   The imagery and the accompanying Marxist rhetoric can be chillingly familiar for older Chinese tourists.

   Popular Chinese writer Ye Yonglie, who lived through China's extreme personality cult around Mao Zedong in the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, published his book 'The Real North Korea' last year.

   Ye said that since China began privatizing its economy and allowing foreign trade and investment in the 1980s, the Korean Workers' Party has seen China as 'revisionist,' just as Mao once used the word for the Soviet Union.

   'Kim Jong Il clearly defined China as revisionist in a speech,' he said.

   Ye's remarks reflect a cooling relationship between North Korea and its long-term ally, which sent Chinese troops to help fend off South Korean and US-led Allied forces in the 1950-53 Korean War.

   China still provides an undeclared quantity of food and energy aid to famine-hit North Korea. It is Pyongyang's biggest trading partner, with official exports and imports valued at 2.8 billion dollars last year, up 41 per cent from 2007.

   The Chinese government joined the international community in condemning North Korea's nuclear tests in 2006 and this year.

   But the government fears a potential flood of refugees from poverty, famine and repression if international pressure on North Korea continues to grow. Up to 250,000 North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China after crossing the 1,400-kilometre border.

   This year, the two nations are celebrating the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties. But halfway through the year, they have announced no major events and, with Kim Jong Il reportedly seriously ill following a stroke last year, no summits of their leaders.

   Sources in Pyongyang said diplomatic friction grew last year when the Chinese ambassador visited North Korean officials four times to demand that they guarantee the security of China's torch relay for the Beijing Olympics, despite the fact that most people consider Pyongyang one of the world's most controlled cities.

   The report adds to the doubts about China's ability to dissuade its neighbour from continuing its nuclear weapons programme.

   China maintains a moderate voice on North Korea's militarization because it still hopes to revive six-nation negotiations on ending the nuclear programme.

   It would see the failure of the six-party talks - which also involve the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia - as a loss of face in the international arena.

   'China needs to balance stability and non-proliferation,' Cai Jian, a North Korea specialist at Shanghai's Fudan University, told dpa recently.

   'This is not easy,' Cai said of China's diplomatic efforts with North Korea. 'It is really delicate.'

   And some in Pyongyang appear to believe that it is China which should feel indebted to North Korea for forming a buffer zone between China and the US forces in South Korea since the Korean War.

   'We have protected China all this time,' said one North Korean official who did not want to be identified. 'They should be grateful to us.'