China-Korea Relations: New Sanctions, Old Dilemmas (Scott A. Snyder, CFR)

North Korea’s fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and long-range missile launch on Feb. 7 drew global opposition to Pyongyang’s actions in the form of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2270 on March 2 and condemnation by regional leaders. Pyongyang, however, promptly dismissed such calls with an intense series of short- and mid-range missile launches of various types on March 3, March 10, March 18, March 21, April 15, April 23, and April 28. Presidents Xi Jinping and Park Geun-hye expressed support for full implementation of UN sanctions in bilateral talks at the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Washington on March 31, joined by US and Japanese counterparts. Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Yun Byung-se pledged their commitment to denuclearization at the fifth Foreign Ministers Meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Beijing on April 27-28, where Xi declared that China “will absolutely not permit war or chaos on the peninsula.” Despite Beijing’s hardened rhetoric, current tensions on the Korean Peninsula point to enduring differences between Beijing and Seoul’s strategic preferences and the domestic motivations behind Pyongyang’s aggression as the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) prepared to convene its first party congress in more than three decades in May

http://www.cfr.org/regional-security/china-korea-relations-new-sanctions-old-dilemmas/p37920