Chinese officials have told international counterparts Beijing could ultimately accept a Korean peninsula unified under Seoul’s control, according to leaked US diplomatic dispatches.
Reports published on the WikiLeaks website on Tuesday counter the perception that China’s defence of the status quo on the Korean peninsula is absolute in spite of Beijing’s refusal to condemn Pyongyang for shelling a South Korean island last week and sinking one of Seoul’s warships in March.
In a diplomatic cable earlier this year, Chun Yung-woo, then South Korea’s vice-foreign minister, told the US ambassador to Seoul that Chinese officials had assured him North Korea “now had little value to China as a buffer state”.