Missiles, Marathons, Memorial Stones: Figuring Out North Korea and China

BEIJING â€" There has been a frenzy of tea-leaf watching of North Korea - will it launch a ballistic missile, destroy Seoul, or, in a surprisingly relaxed note, hold an international marathon in Pyongyang on Sunday to mark the birthday on Apr. 15 of the founder of the nation, Kim Il-sung, as Japan’s NHK World reports, citing North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency

But for all the intense focus on the North, perhaps more attention should be paid to China. Attention of a different sort, that is.

Recently, speculation appears to be growing among United States officials that China is shifting its position on supporting North Korea, long the country’s only major ally and traditionally as close as “lips and teeth.”

Yet on the ground - or perhaps in the ground - here in northeast Asia, there are concerns among Koreans that China’s interest may be motivated by something very different: territorial claims. In other words, China isn’t really interested in aligning itself more closely with the U.S. on North Korea, because it has its own game plan. All it has to do is ensure that U.S.-North Korean relations remain terrible, as they are, and it increases its influence over the region, politically, economically and strategically.

As the Beijing-based journalist, Francesco Sisci, wrote in a column in the Asia Times Online: “Some Chinese believe the North Korean nuclear test was actually aimed at China, not at South Korea or the U.S. They underscored that for the first time China and the US were informed at the same time about the experiment. In the past, China was informed first.”

Mr. Sisci didn’t address the issue of territorial claims, but wrote: “Pyongyang is tired of being used as a passive pawn in China’s bigger foreign policy plans,” adding, “The ideal situation for Beijing would be a regime in Pyongyang that gives up its nuclear weapons and embraces wider economic reforms.”

For evidence of deep suspicion among Koreans about China, people need look no further than the reported discovery late last year of a memorial stone from the Koguryo, a dynasty that ruled approximately the territory of North Korea (and some of the South) and large parts of China’s northeastern provinces, flourishing for 700 years until 1,300 years ago.

“China conducting closed research into ancient Korean dynasty,” read a headline in The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper. “Observers say work on the Koguryo stele is an attempt to incorporate it into Chinese history.”

The issue is not new. In 2004, China-South Korean relations soured over it. As my colleague, James Brooke, reported at the time, the tensions were prompted, among other things, by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, calling the kingdom a “subordinate state that fell under the jurisdiction of the Chinese dynasties and was under the great influence of China’s politics, culture and other areas.”

That year, too, the Chinese Foreign Ministry deleted references to Koguryo from the Korean history section on its Web site. A Chinese government study group, the Northeast Project, had been set up two years previously, in 2002, to establish the kind of history Beijing was looking for, and issued academic papers bolstering the position that the ancient kingdom was merely a Chinese vassal state.

Protests erupted in South Korea. But North Korea is no less sensitive about China’s claims to the kingdom, which Koreans of all kind see as the forerunner of their nation.

As my colleague in Seoul, Choe Sang-hun, explained back then, two-thirds of Koguryo’s historical territory lies within contemporary China, and Beijing wants to forestall any future Korean claim over its northeastern territory, which is home to large ethnic Korean communities.

At Jilin University, in Jilin province, which borders North Korea, the archaeologist Wei Cuncheng is a key researcher into the bygone dynasty and worked on the Northeast Project, according to the university’s Web site.

Today, Mr. Wei and others are engaged in a research project that began in 2011 and is due to run until 2015, on Koguryo and Bohai culture (the Bohai is the name of a sea area off China’s northeast coast.) It’s a “major project” of the national social sciences foundation, the Web site says.

So what is the newly discovered memorial stone that’s provoking interest

The stele, which appears to have been constructed around 414 A.D., was discovered last July in Maxian near Ji’an city in Jilin province, though the discovery was not announced until the beginning of January 2013, The Hankyoreh wrote.

Known as a stele, it’s the third such object to be discovered in the area, wrote The Hankyoreh. And the same people on the Northeast Project are involved: “The Hankyoreh confirmed that the research team includes a large number of scholars who took part in the Northeast Project, which was controversial for its distortions of Koguryo history,” it wrote.

“Officials in the city of Ji’an in Jilin Province, northeast China, where the new Koguryo stele was discovered, assembled a guidance team for protection and study of the gravestone. The research team, according to an announcement posted recently by Ji’an’s Cultural Administration on a local government website, includes Wei Cuncheng, professor at Jilin University.”

Concerns are being raised that China may use the results of the study of the new Koguryo stele to reinforce its argument that Koguryo belongs to China, the site wrote.

So amid all the talk of missiles and marathons, it’s worth noting the story of the memorial stone, which points to older, deeper issues at work here in Northeast Asia - and to China’s unique interests in the region.

Reporting Under Thatcher’s Gaze

LONDON - It was impossible to report on Margaret Thatcher up close without occasionally falling victim to the icy stare.

She routinely deployed it to skewer those who had the temerity or the witlessness to challenge her unswerving certainties.

“Margaret Thatcher was the most frightening woman I ever met,” recalled Nigel Nelson, longtime political editor of the left-leaning Mirror. “The Iron Lady would fix you with her steel blue eyes leaving men quivering jellies.”

It was an occupational hazard, not only for her colleagues who strayed from the path, but also for those of us in the permanent British press assigned to try to keep up with her bustling pace.

One occasion on which I got the treatment was on a prime ministerial flight back from the Middle East, when I tentatively suggested that her much-heralded visit had failed to make its intended contribution to the peace process in the region.

She fixed me with the laser beam stare and then imperiously changed the subject to the appalling state of Britain’s litter-strewn streets.

My old Thatcher-era colleagues all have their own anecdotes. “Intimidating” was one of the favorite adjectives applied to her in recollections following her death on Monday.

Mark Colvin, an Australian journalist, posted on Twitter:

I covered Britain and Europe in the 80s. Asking Thatcher a q at a press conf was intimidating. Her gaze swivelled on you like a tank-barrel.

“When you were in front of her, it was quite alarming,” John Sergeant, a television veteran of the Thatcher years, told the BBC.

The trick with the eyes was an integral part of Mrs. Thatcher’s well-cultivated abrasive image, a curious one for a woman who came to power in 1979 pledging, “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.”

What we got was discord, according to her critics.

For every tribute this week for the leader who “saved Britain,” there has been a denunciation from those who believe she divided a nation that continues to suffer from her legacy.

Some of that divisive legacy has expressed itself in street parties in London, Glasgow and elsewhere to celebrate her passing.

As my colleague Alan Cowell writes:

The venom of the protests recalled policies encouraging private business and crushing labor union power that her admirers depicted on Tuesday as liberating the economy from years in the doldrums and that her foes characterized as ruinous for the poor.

It was a case of “love her or hate her,” as France’s Le Monde put it, but little in between.

Almost a decade and a half after she left office, neither the adulation nor the hatred appears to have mellowed.

As a journalist, I can’t say that reporting the Thatcher era wasn’t a rewarding experience. Conflict makes for good copy and, with Margaret Thatcher, it was never in short supply.

But there is always something disconcerting about ideological certainty â€" with or without the icy stare.

IHT Quick Read, April 9

NEWS A group of Google’s rivals filed an antitrust complaint alleging abuse of its mobile Android software. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

Margaret Thatcher’s conservative prescriptions for her country’s economy have never found fertile soil on the Continent, not even amid a gloom at least as dark as that of ’70s Britain. John F. Burns and Alan Cowell report from London.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Hanover, Germany, and expressed dismay over the treatment of nongovernmental organizations. Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

Portugal was once seen as a role model in the euro debt crisis as its conservative government stuck to the stringent terms of a 78 billion euro bailout negotiated with international creditors two years ago. But it has now earned a very different distinction as the test case of the limits of the austerity plans that have been prescribed across Southern Europe. Raphael Minder reports.

Jacob Lew, the U.S. Treasury secretary, urged European officials to ease its policies in order to help the Continent and the global economy. Annie Lowrey reports from Brussels.

A weekly summary of world events and news broadcast by Finnish state radio in classical Latin has helped bring together fans of the ancient tongue. John Tagliabue reports from Helsinki.

FASHION Fashion is now indisputably in a geometric moment, as seen in spring collections and an exhibition in London. Suzy Menkes writes on stripes.

ARTS The Meryl Streep biopic excepted, musicians, novelists and playwrights were usually harsh in their depictions of Margaret Thatcher. Jennifer Schuessler reports.

SPORTS Novak Djokovic twisted his ankle as he helped Serbia beat the United States in the Davis Cup, and his status for the upcoming clay season is uncertain. Christopher Clarey on tennis.

Guan Tianlang of China, the reigning champion of a competition conceived by Augusta National in 2008 to develop amateur golfers, will bring his budding game there for the Masters this week. Karen Crouse on golf.