At Last, China Regrets June 4th Shootings!

And obviously, I refer to the killings of three Chinese citizens and the wounding of a fourth by North Korean border guards:

Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang, briefing reporters in Beijing, said the shooting incident occurred in the early morning hours of June 4, around the northeastern town of Dandong, when the Chinese civilians crossed into North Korea to engage in illicit trading, common along the 880-mile border.

South Korean and Japanese media reported that the Chinese were in a boat on the Yalu River attempting to smuggle copper from Sinuiju in North Korea, when they were fired on by a North Korean ship. Qin said China was investigating the incident and “attached great importance to it.” He added that China had “immediately made solemn representations” to North Korea. [Washington Post, Keith Richburg]

North Korean Intellectuals’ Solidarity relates a slightly different narrative of the incident (11 p.m. on June 3rd) via the Wall Street Journal. One Chinese academic quoted by the Post called this “a big deal:”

“Chinese people will be shocked to hear this news,” Zhang added. “This will affect Chinese people’s views of North Korea.”

Who knows? It might even lead to the Communist Party losing seats to the Tea Party in the next mid-term election! Not even Hu Jintao’s job is secure now!

Oh, right. Almost forgot for a minute there.

Well, maybe we should all take the fact that China made a public statement about the shooting of four of its citizens — and after all, Chinese are pretty much worthless to the North Koreans as hostages — as a sign of China’s “displeasure.” (Note, by the way, that the BBC mentions Robert Park and Laura Ling, but completely forgets poor Aijalon Gomes, who is still inside North Korea, serving an 8-year sentence to hard labor) Maybe we can even overinterpret this terse statement with optimistic abandon and conclude that China, notwithstanding the fact that it ran interference for Kim Jong Il at the U.N. after he sank a South Korean warship, is this close (fingers almost touching) to capping North Korea’s imports of baby formula Maybach sedans, yachts, and gas centrifuges at 2009 levels.

Or, maybe we can assume safely that everyone in Beijing will have forgotten this by next Tuesday, and that China isn’t going to do d**k about this.

So you sense that to me, the expression of Chinese displeasure doesn’t signal any real change in China’s support for Kim Jong Il’s regime. What’s more interesting to me is the cross-border smuggling side of the story, one that seems to have been ripped from the pages of my Capitalist Manifesto.

The stretch of the Yalu just south of Dandong is frequently trafficked by smugglers, some of them bringing North Korean-made drugs into China or banned Chinese products, such as DVDs or cellphones, into North Korea.

The North Korean government is especially strict about the export of copper, which has been looted from factories, electrical and telecommunications facilities by Northerners desperate for money. But the North’s border guards do not normally shoot to kill — at least not when the smugglers are Chinese.

“Only their own people,” said Kim. [L.A. Times, Barbara Demick]

Here, as is often the case, there’s ambiguity in the question of whether the smuggling implicates North Korean officials in corruption. I’d usually infer that anyone sailing a boat loaded with scrap copper across a heavily patrolled river border between two police states and a common smuggling route would at least think he had official protection, though this ended up being far from the truth in practice.

“Illegal trafficking of this kind has been going on for many years, but this is the first time the North Koreans have taken such very harsh measures against smugglers,” said Shi Yinghong, professor of international relations at Renmin University of China. “I think this shows that relations have entered a very tense period.” [Wall Street Journal, Aaron Back and Evan Ramstad]

At the same time, another story about cross-border smuggling is emerging from the same general area. This time, however, a North Korean provincial official has been popped by the ChiComs’ finest for smuggling crystal meth into China in … a kimchee jar.

South Korean activist Do Hee-yoon quoting a source in China on Monday said that a 33-year-old official surnamed Rim from the Sinuiju city government’s trade bureau was arrested by Chinese police on charges of drug trafficking in Dandong on the evening of March 2.

“North Korean agents targeting South Korea have been arrested before for their involvement in drug trafficking, but it’s unprecedented for a senior government trade official to be arrested for direct involvement,” Do said. “The Dandong Customs Office has mobilized customs officials from Dalian to probe all aspects of North Korea-China trade.” [Chosun Ilbo]

The fact that North Koreans are smuggling dope into China isn’t an entirely new development. The Chosun Ilbo thinks this confirms that North Korean officials are still involved in state-sponsored drug smuggling, and God knows there’s ample evidence to support that charge. Still, recent reports suggest that a substantial share of North Korea’s meth business has turned pro, and it’s entirely possible that this official was just plain corrupt and acting for personal profit.