The Marmot's Hole has an interesting article about the possibility that China would invade some or all of North Korea when it finally collapses. I posted this article at the Motley Fool and at Baen's Bar and had some interesting reponses.
The main responses were "so what if they do?" or "why would they?" and both have rather depressing answers.
Why?
The latter question is based on the premise that at the time of the hypothetical invasion N Korea would be full of starving people and no infrastructure and, hence, would not seem terribly attractive to an invader. Well that is probably true but a gentleman named corbetti on TMF pointed out that one thing N Korea does have is women. As the Economist pointed out 2 years ago China has a severe sex imbalance and that means a lot of men are going to be looking for brides that aren't available in China. As Corbetti said:
There are a LOT of horny men without prospective brides that are about to emerge on the Chinese landscape.
The phrase rape and pillage does have a historical basis, you know.
The second answer to "why would they" is that China and some of its neighbouring states (e.g. S Korea) seem to be almost Balkan in their memory of territory their (often remote) ancestors once ruled and which therefore should be a part of th emodern state. China demonstrates this almost daily with its preoccupation with Taiwan. Any rational person can see that Taiwan is a functional independant nation which ought to be a valued partner and ally of China due to their shared heritage but this seems to escape the Chinese leadership and (perhaps due to propaganda) the Chinese man on the street. Thus in addition to having women N Korea has territory which would increase the perceived power of China if it ruled them (if you think this sounds like pre WW1 Europe then I agree, however just because it was proven stupid then doesn't mean people didn't believe it either then or now). The Marmot's hole has had various articles about Chinese and S Korean sparring on versions of history that make a large difference to whether parts of China and N Korea were traditionally "Chinese" or "Korean".
So What?
So lets go back to question one "so what?" If China occupies N Korea then we will see an extremely peeved S Korea. Also, one suspects, after a while a number of N Koreans will also be somewhat hacked off in the same way that many Tibetans and Uzbeks are. Unlike the Tibetans and the Uzbeks and rather like the Afghans under Soviet occupation, disaffected N Koreans will have the support of a nearby nation which means that prolonged destabilization and resistance is likely. It would not surprise me if this ended up pitting S Korea against China in a full scale war. This is a very very scary scenario and has the potential to drag in allies (both traditional and enemy of my enemy is my ally variety) from around the region into the conflict in a way that is very similar to how WW1 escalated from a minor Balkan squabble. Even if the US and Japan did not get involved (to begin with at least) it would not surprise me if Taiwan and possibly some of China's other neighbours such as Vietnam decided they could benefit from supporting Korea and I could certainly imagine that the US and Japan becoming involved as well as time went on. Even if the war remained regional the impact on the global economy would be severe. erhaps the mo