To ‘Avoiding Entrapment’

While out at dinner with graduate students from the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) tonight, the world’s favorite dictator came up in conversation. Namely, the tradition of
memes begun under Kim Jong-il, entitled “Kim Jong-il looks at things,” which has been so nobly continued by Kim Jong-un, under the auspicious label “Kim Jong-un looks at things,” came up.

One of the SIIS students bemoaned the Chinese-North Korean relationship as an embarrassing nuisance.  We shared our concerns that North Korea’s precarious political leadership and penchant for provocations could lead to conflict on the peninsula.  In comparison, I observed, “The United States worries about entrapment by Japan in the same way China worries about entrapment by North Korea.”  In other words, both China and the United States could be pulled into armed conflict because of long-term allegiances and promises to two nations which recently increased in feisty-ness.  In a semi-solemn moment, we gladly raised our glasses to ‘Avoiding entrapment.’

If the students we ate dinner with tonight reflect the thinking of China’s next generation of diplomats, then there is hope China will at least refuse to be drawn into another peninsular debacle stemming from the Kim family’s hunger for power and perhaps even clamp down on the
North Korean regime’s erratic behavior.

Look on, little Kim.  So long as looking is all you do.

Benjamin J. Hayford