Due to the latest tension between North and South Korea over the sinking of a South Korean navy ship by North Korea, China has been asked to step in and help. However, China’s response has been for the “relevant parties” to “calmly and properly handle the issue and avoid escalation of tension.” Source: Politics News
If China is reluctant to be sucked into the latest North Korean conflict, what could be causing this response? One reason might be that China has a history with Korea going back to the Tang Dynasty in 688 AD, when there was an alliance with Silla, a Korean state.
North Korean National Musical Troupe currently visiting China performing “Dream of Red Mansion” (adapted from Chinese classic novel).
Then it could be because Chinese culture, written language and political institutions have had an influence in Korea since the 4th century and in the 14th century, Korea came under the influence of Confucian thought influenced by Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism).
China’s reluctance to put public pressure on Pyongyang to step off the warhorse might be because the Chinese feel it would be like pressuring a family member. A 1,700-year old relationship might have more weight than the one China has with America that isn’t even forty yet. However, measuring that weight may also depend on the trillion or more China has invested in America.
_______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
China’s Holistic Historical Timeline
iLook China 
[…] See China and North Korea […]