Wikileaks WASHINGTON: China, long viewed as the protector of North Korea, is ready to accept the unification of the peninsula after a collapse of the regime, according to US documents leaked on Monday.
Over an expansive dinner last year, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan revealed that Beijing considers North Korea's nuclear program to be "very troublesome," according to a memo obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
Ambassador Cheng Guoping "said China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term," said the leaked cable by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland and reprinted by a British newspaper.
In a separate cable, South Korea's then vice foreign minister Chun Yung-Woo said that China "had far less influence on North Korea than most people believed."
"Beijing had 'no will' to use its economic leverage to force a change in Pyongyang's policies and the DPRK leadership knows it," he said, referring to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Chun also said that South Korea believed that North Korea "had already collapsed economically" and would "collapse politically" two to three years after the death of leader Kim Jong-Il.
Kim, who is now embroiled in tensions with the South, is believed to be preparing to hand over power to his son Kim Jong-Un, who is in his 20s.
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