PYONGYANG AND BEIJING

NORTH KOREA TIED TO CHINA

Bruno de Paiva

Asia Times, October 15, 2011

North Korean Prime Minister Choe Yong-rim recently spent a week in China on an official visit on behalf of the notoriously isolated and totalitarian nation.

The 80-year-old prime minister visited the Chinese capital Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu province, in China’s east, where he met with top Chinese bureaucrats including Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao.

The visit followed recent bilateral talks between North Korea and Russia, Cambodia and Myanmar for the purpose of increasing trade in food and energy.

Those official meetings have led to the likelihood that the talks in China by Choe also focused on North Korea's economy, whose survival is largely reliant on China.

While North Korea has recently attempted to establish greater trade relations elsewhere, the visit to China by Choe shows that the cards it has played in recent years has given it no real option but to keep China as its main trading partner.

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