This is the last update on N. Korea international activities and its diplomatic ties.
China values N.Korea ties despite sanctions
China still highly regards its relationship with North Korea, Beijing’s state-run newspaper Huanqiu Shibao declared through its editorial on Thursday 7/4, two days after its announcement that it would suspend mineral trade and jet fuel.
The editorial emphasized China’s complete implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 and its intent to find a peaceful solution to Pyongyang’s nuclear issue, mentioning the Six-Party Talks.
“Even if China announced the embargo against North Korea, a ‘landmark change,’ is probably exaggerated,” the paper reads, criticizing the U.S., South Korea and Japan’s ambition towards “regime change” in Pyongyang. “Xi’s policy on North Korea clarifies denuclearization, at the same time casts doubt on South Korea and the U.S.’s intentions,” Kim Heung-kyu, director of China Policy Institute at Ajou University, told NK News.
Last Sunday Pyongyang’s Rodong Sinmun criticized some “large countries” who have established “friendly relationship through blood” but are currently pressing North Korea.
Despite the historical bond between the two countries, worsening public opinion in China is another factor backing up Beijing’s decision. “The Chinese government has repeatedly stated it will strictly implement the resolution, supported by Chinese public opinion,” the editorial reads.
Kim said approximately 60 percent of Chinese people agree with the sanctions, while a higher percentage of experts approve of it. “It could be a burden for the government to push foreign policy against public opinion,” Kim added.
Since the UN resolution was adopted, China has reiterated its commitment to respecting the sanctions, on condition of not undermining the “livelihood” of ordinary North Koreans and regional stability around its border.
N. Korea recently opened hospital in Tanzania
As the world and the American puppets are plotting against Pyongyang in order to discredit their policy and make difficult their survival, North Korea has recently opened a hospital in Tanzania and since been striving to boost earnings apparently to make up for its foreign income squeezed by international sanctions.
“Maibong Sukidor Medical”, a Korean traditional medical center, opened near the East African country’s former capital of Dar es Salaam in early February, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said.
A copy of the center’s business cards showed a doctor named Pak Jae-hong serves as the managing director of the establishment. A small billboard was also set up on a road leading to the medical center, with the description “Korean dispensary”.
The radio report quoted a source saying that two people, one male doctor and one female nurse, were working there. The hospital is making utmost efforts to concern patients with its newspaper advertisements that promise to cure every kind of terminal disease.
A total of 13 North Korean hospitals are in operation in the East African country after the first one opened in 1991, the report also said.
The international community, led by the United Nations Security Council, adopted a series of economic sanctions on the communist country after its nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year, which were banned under UNSC resolutions on Pyongyang.
In a separate story, the RFA said North Korea’s trade with Hong Kong has shown a steady decline ever since its leader Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011.
The volume of trade between the two countries stood at US$6.5 million in 2015, down 40.4 percent from a year earlier, the RFA said, quoting data from the Hong Kong branch of South Korea’s trade agency, KOTRA.
Tobacco accounted for the most frequently imported item to North Korea from Hong Kong, while precious metals was the most favorite export shipped to Hong Kong.