Why does isolation of North Korea benefit China? – From the Perspective of the Network Exchange Theory
For decades of years, North Korea has been isolated from international economy both willingly and unwillingly due to its national isolation policy and the sanctions posed by UN, especially by the United States because of the issues such as dictatorship, endless research and testing for nuclear weapons, communism, etc. Whatever the reason was, long years of isolation made North Korea and its surrounding country to f orm somewhat unique power dynamics in international relations.
In this structure, there are 4 major players:
- North Korea
- China
- South Korea
- US
The biggest and most influential player, China, has benefitted the most from the isolation. According to one research, the natural resources hidden under North Korea’s territory amounts 6 trillion dollars. However, due to its lack of money to develop mining huge facilities, it could not develop its own resources by itself, but had to sell them for money. China, with shared communist principle and military alliance with North Korea, it could benefit hugely from buying most of the development rights for North Korea’s natural resources at giveaway prices.
Korea has been still at war with North Korea until recently and experienced several local military provocations although it was under ceasefire. Although Korea has been sending huge economic and humanitarian aids to North Korea, since South Korea’s policy towards North Korea is hugely influenced by the United States, thus volatile, those aids were nothing more valuable than anything from diplomatic standpoint.
U.S. has been pressuring North Korea with various economic sanctions.
As we learned in class, if one node has only one neighbor who has various connections with other neighbors, the power of that node greatly diminishes. In this case, North Korea only connects to China, which connects to various other nations. Thus, the negotiating power of North Korea has been greatly diminished, resulting in extremely low selling price for its natural resources.