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CHINA SPOILS NORTH KOREA

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 1/19/2022 12:56:19 PM

T K NANDANAN North Korea has again shocked the world by conducting 4th test of Short-Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBM) on Monday from an airport in its capital city of Pyongyang this month with a view to expand its arsenal. Nuclear-armed North Korea had already conducted three other missile tests in less than two weeks before Monday, an unusuallyrapid series of launches. It is pertinent to note that two of them involved single ‘hypersonic missiles’ capable of high speed and manoeuvring after launch, while a pair of short-range ballistic missiles fired from train cars. Thus, North Korea has started piling up nuclear arsenal to its burgeoning weapon storage while its people have been starving to death. Undoubtedly, North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un has rather concentrated on producing nuclear arsenal to scare the rest of the world. Meanwhile, China has restored railway freight traffic with North Korea that had been suspended over pandemic concerns. It is true that China remains the North Korea’s main ally and source of economic aid, despite signing on to sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes. Anyway, Beijing has been pursuing carrot and stickpolicy but China’s heart goes for North Korea. However, North Korea, an arrogant and rogue nation with nuclear weapons on its stockpiles, is crying as it cannot feed its poor people, who are at risk of starvation with the economy worsening due to a self-imposed Coronavirus blockade and UN sanctions imposed over the country’s nuclear programmes. The impoverished nation has been behind a rigid blockade since early last year to protect itself from the pandemic with the economy suffering and trade with key partner China dwindling to a trickle. In June,2021, Pyongyang admitted that it was facing food scarcity sounding alarm in a country with a moribund agricultural sector that has long struggled to feed the population. As a matter of fact, the most vulnerable are the children and the elderly who are at risk of starvation. It may be recalled that Pyongyang is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, which have seen rapid progress under Kim. It may be recalled that only in October, 2021, it successfully test-fired newly developed long-range cruise missilesunderscoring its military capabilities amid a stalemate in nuclear negotiations with the United States. The newly developed cruise missiles demonstrated an ability to hit targets 1,500 kilometres away during flight tests. Kim earlier hailed it as the country’s military might implying that they were being developed with an intent to arm the nation with nuclear warheads. North Korea is truly like a spoilt brat and China is overly responsible for that. All the latest technologies in terms of hypersonic missile North Korea gloats over undoubtedly come from China, not from anywhere else. So, China is responsible for the wayward and destructive behaviour of North Korea.