Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

The demise of the man who was once the power behind the throne in North Korea inspires so many theories that all you can say for sure is that nobody knows what’s really going on in the corridors of power in Pyongyang.

A couple of these theories are so easy, however, they’ve got to be more than a little skewed. The first is that Jang Song-Thaek’s departure was a punch to the gut by the heavyweight Kim Jong-Un, eager to “consolidate” his power.

The other is that China, upset by the commotion inside its North Korean protectorate, wishes Jang had stayed where he was.

In the greater East Asian power game, other scenarios also make sense. Could it be that the neophyte Kim Jong-Un needed Jang as a veteran power player who was capable, until his fall from grace, of staving off backstabbers eager to undermine him? Is Kim strengthened by Jang’s downfall, or more vulnerable?

As for the other theory, might the ouster of the regent be another manifestation of China’s grand design? The new North Korean of the moment, Choe Ryong-Hae, called on Chinese officials last May as political officer of his country’s military establishment. Might China’s President Xi Jinping prefer a militarist to a reformist North Korea?

China may see North Korea as a way to bring pressure against its foes in the East China Sea. Both Japan and South Korea have defied China’s newly demarcated “air defense identification zone.”

What could be better than for North Korea to teach the South a lesson in the Yellow Sea — where the North has long disputed the South’s Northern Limit Line — by doing something akin to the sinking of the Cheonan or the shelling of Yeonpyeong island in 2010, incidents that left 50 South Koreans dead.

Now China is turning a submerged rock 150 kilometers southwest of Jeju into a flashpoint. That’s because China’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) portentously covers Ieodo, which China has long claimed.

Never mind that Ieodo is 275 kilometers east of the China coast or that the South Koreans have built a fully equipped heliport laden with navigational and weather equipment from the base of the rock. Nor can China claim to have discovered the rock. A British ship named the Socotra was the first to find it in 1900 — and dubbed it the Socotra.

South Korea’s outrage over the Chinese claim to Ieodo puts Korea in the same boat as Japan, which faces far more serious issues in its defense of Senkaku, aka Diaoyu in Chinese, a collection of eight islets that were uninhabited when Japan acquired them in defeating China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895.

China now claims its ancient mariners saw them first, though Chinese people never settled there and China showed no interest until a UN team in 1968 said maybe oil lay unexploited in the lower depths surrounding the islands.

The confrontation over Senkaku, 177 kilometers northwest of the nearest Japanese island, 330 kilometers from the China coast and 170 kilometers from Taiwan, which also claims them as part of China, is escalating.

Not long ago, Chinese fishing vessels played a cat-and-mouse game with the Japanese Coast Guard, which chased them off with mega-loudspeakers and a water cannon. Now Chinese warplanes are zipping around, and the Japanese are sending out planes to shoo them away.

The latest twist — the U.S. may show its support with its Japanese treaty partner by sending drones to the region to see what’s going on. Could they be the precursor of a shooting war? Maybe not now, but years hence.

All of which is bad for business. Who is going to want to invest in North Korea while the hardliners are in ascendancy? Can state companies make and honor contracts?

Jang undoubtedly had resources that his tormentors would like to acquire. As the husband of Kim Jong-Un’s aunt, and as a long-time businessperson, he had to have built up his own funds. One way he did so was to come up with a scheme whereby North Korean missions abroad were used to disseminate meth to pay off operating expenses.

In a violent culture, with two of Jang’s aides already executed publicly, more bloodshed is likely before the regime feels confident enough to confront South Korea and Japan — and the United States, bound to each in separate treaties.

But might not the enormous sums that China makes from trade with the U.S. and South Korea deter China from staging any “incident?” Maybe, but North Korea’s real value is that of a buffer between China and hostile powers.

With the demise of Jang and the rise of a pliable Choe Ryong-Hae, the Chinese are all the more secure while intimidating Japan and Korea with new lines on charts and scary flights over remote islands.

Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has written about Ieodo and Senkaku in his book, “Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent.”

  ADIZ, Choe Ryong-Hae, Jang Song-Thaek, Kim Jong-Un, Senkaku, Was China’s hand behind the palace coup in North Korea?, Xi Jinping