Abstract :
When North Korea admitted in mid-October that it had been actively developing nuclear weapons, in violation of international agreements, it put several big diplomatic players in awkward positions: the United States, because it wanted to keep the focus on Iraq; Japan, which was eager to keep improving relations with the Koreas; but most of all China, nominally an ally of North Korea, but with plenty of good reasons to be unhappy with the prospect of its erratic neighbor´s acquiring weapons of mass destruction. On the surface, relations between Asia´s two Communist countries still seemed cozy at the time the United States confronted North Korea with intelligence on the latter´s clandestine nuclear program. But in fact, the fast-industrializing People´s Republic has had less and less in common with its mostly pre-modern neighbor. So it is perhaps no wonder that China seized on Pyongyang´s surprise admission as an opportunity to improve its relationship with the United States.
