延坪島虚弱的借口 Yeonpyeong island a feeble excuse

Main Population Centers

It is a piece of good news to hear that China has sent emissaries to both North and South Korea while receiving a high placed official from North Korea. It might finally have no choice but finding a solution to the recurrent problems on its north eastern border. It is no secret that China's policy in that region is based on avoiding at all costs having a share a border with an ally of the United States.
It might have to face reality even more than Kim Jung-un in waiting leader of the seemingly recluse nation.

Wouldn't the obvious solution be to have America and China sign a formal international treaty whereby the US would accept not to station troops less than, for example, 100 miles from the northern border? A solemn and formal decision that could create a 100-mile-wide demilitarized zone south of the border. South Korean Troops would be allowed limited military posting and the Chinese could have the necessary troops to watch the now porous border. Not that it would be necessary to keep an eye on that border; it is hard indeed to imagine China invading North Korea when it has enough trouble on its western front.

Yeonpyeong 연평도

This is no wishful thinking: already an estimated 200 000 North Koreans live on the Chinese side of the border and people move back and forth bribing, among others, the North Korean border patrols. Smuggled Chinese mobile phones can be still be used 30 km inside North Korea and enable North Koreans to keep in touch with escapee relatives in South Korea. News filter in from the outside into North Korea and this, more than anything, could explain the recent bout of violence that killed two civilians in the South after the army bombed houses on the island of Yeonpyeong.
A show of force by the new North Korean leadership is only part of the reason for this unprecedented violence.

Reporter Barbara Demick wrote a book based on two years of extensive research with escapees, Nothing to Envy, which describes daily life within North Korea. It destroys completely the idea that it is a totally hermetic country. It also redeems our faith in human nature when some human beings always succeed to see through a wall of lies, no matter how well conceived.

China could very well face its very first test in real international diplomacy for the good of the rest of the world. This is an exam it cannot fail.
No joke.