It will take decades before the relevant papers will become de-classified, but it seems likely that at some point in 2002 or 2003 the Chinese leadership had an important discussion of the North Korean situation. We can even surmise which decisions were made on that discussion or soon afterwards, even though the exact wording will be known, perhaps, only to our grandchildren. It seems that around 2002 Chinese diplomats and politicians concluded that the collapse of the North Korean state would not serve China's interests and thus should be prevented or controlled.

Indeed, from around 2002 Chinese investment in the North, as well as Chinese trade with that small and secluded state, began to grow with remarkable speed. In recent years, China has become the largest trade partner of North Korea, controlling about a half of its entire trade volume.

While small Chinese merchants, obviously driven by their own initiative, sell consumption goods to the North Korean market operators, big Chinese companies, probably backed by the government, are busily establishing control over the mining industry and making inroads into infrastructure developments.

The countr's largest iron ore mine, in Musan, as well as its largest copper mine, in Hyesan, are operated by joint ventures controlled by Chinese capital. Talks about rights to use Korean sea ports are advancing as well, albeit not without delays. And, last but not least, Chinese publications stress that the ancient kingdom of Koryo which in the early centuries of the Christian era controlled what is now North Korea (as well as large parts of the present day northeast China) was, essentially, an "ancient Chinese minority state" - implying that the Korean north has long been an area where China played a special role.

In early January, the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report on relations between North Korea and China. According to this report, unnamed "Chinese experts" admitted that if the demise of Kim Jong Il and/or his regime leads to social disruption and chaos, the Chinese will try to obtain the UN peace-keeping mandate to restore order in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. The present author was not much surprised by this publication: for the past two or three years during frank conversations with Chinese colleagues, he has heard very similar remarks.

Indeed, if Kim Jong Il dies suddenly, or without an heir, or with an unpopular and weak heir, the situation could easily disintegrate into danger and havoc. Nobody wants that, of course, and the Chinese might move in with or without UN approval. They will probably secure the situation, but the likely outcome will be the emergence of a pro-Chinese government in Pyongyang.

The Chinese might even undertake a pre-emptive operation, without waiting for disaster to strike. The North Korean elite is deadly afraid of unification with the South, assuming that after such a unification they will be held responsible for their old deeds, purged and perhaps even killed (this is unlikely to happen, but being in the habit of killing their own opponents, these people have some trouble in realizing that political defeat does not necessarily lead to a slaughter).

A pro-Chinese government would keep Kim's officials in place - alive and well they would enjoy an increasingly affluent lifestyle. So, joining hands with the Chinese against the supposed brethren in the South seems to be a logical decision - at least if things get seriously unstable. This makes a pro-Chinese coup in Pyongyang a distinct possibility.

The simmering specter of Chinese occupation is widely discussed in Seoul nowadays. It is seen as an ultimate disaster by nationalists, who believe that such a turn of events will make the division of Korea permanent.

Such a probability exists, to be sure. However, one should remember that no formal occupation of North Korea is likely to happen. Times have changed, it is not 1910 anymore, and since 1945 not a single internationally recognized state has been forcefully absorbed into another (Saddam attempted this in Kuwait, and paid dearly for it). References to Tibet are not relevant: when in 1951 the Chinese took it over, the Dalai Lama's state was not recognized internationally. If the Chinese decide to take over the North, they will have to resort to indirect control, similar to what the Soviets did in East Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.

These days everybody who thinks about the fate of North Korean has to consider the Chinese takeover as a possibility to be taken seriously. In most cases it is seen as a disaster, but is it really that bad?

One should not welcome such a turn of events, of course. However, Chinese intervention, while not being the best available solution, might still open ways for hope - at least in comparison with the present-day gloomy and explosive situation. To start with, the world probably will be unable and/or willing to do much anyway. If a pro-Chinese coup is staged in Pyongyang, the world will face a fait accompli, so all protests will be useless (and easily deniable).

If a chaos erupts in North Korea, the outside world might indeed welcome (and even actively encourage) Chinese involvement. North Korea probably has five to 10 crude nuclear devices, plus a large stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium and a substantial amount of chemical weapons. Internal chaos might produce a refugee crisis on a scale East Asia has not seen since the 1940s. Both are good reasons why dangerous chaos would have be stopped, by force if necessary, but neither US nor South Korea seem well-prepared for this task.

Americans might worry about proliferation threats and feel sorry about sufferings of North Koreans. Yet they are not very likely to dispatch troops to a chaotic and violent country whose population has been taught for three generations that Americans are evil incarnate, natural born torturers and killers, to be resisted at all costs. Chaos in North Korea, if it happens, cannot be stopped by the use of hi-tech weapons, and Americans are not eager to mire themselves in local intrigues, fights and hatreds. This is not what they like nor what they know how to handle well.

South Koreans are not necessarily different. State-sponsored nationalism is an important feature of the South Korean ideological landscape and lip service to unification as the nation's supreme goal is made by all political forces in Seoul. However, South Koreans have demonstrated throughout the last decade that they are not too eager to risk their hard-won affluence for the sake of unification. South Korea is a democracy, and parents will not be too happy to send their only sons to the dangerous North, to get involved in necessarily dirty and immoral work there - and probably get killed in the process.

So, if everything else fails, the Chinese move across the Yalu will be tacitly (or openly) welcomed. Beijing is not overwhelmed with worries about excessive losses, has good local knowledge and intelligence and, like any authoritarian government, does not care too much about losses of the opposite force. So, it can do this work with brutal efficiency.

And then what? It would be naive to expect China just to leave after it sorts out the problems in its neighbor. It is probable it will maintain a presence for long time while supporting a friendly (or, better to say, semi-puppet) government. Such a government will not continue with the old policies of the Kim family's regime, since these are remarkably inefficient and China, while willing to provide some aid, will not pump large amounts of aid into the North indefinitely. The new dependency will have to be made self-sustainable, and the only way to do this is to encourage reforms in accordance with the tested Chinese-Vietnamese model.

However, for a cold-minded (or cynical, if you prefer) observer it means that the Chinese and their puppets will assume a heavy responsibility. Post-communist reforms are always difficult and dirty to bring about. They solve many old problems - and create a lot of new ones. That is why the South now sees a German-style instant unification as a nightmare: it would mean that Seoul assume the total responsibility for transforming the North, and everybody understands that this will be a costly and unthankful task.

The economic gap between North and South is so large that it cannot be bridged in less than two or three decades, and its existence alone is bound to produce mutual resentment and tensions. The transformation means that nearly all adult North Koreans will find themselves at the bottom of the new social ladder and remain there for the rest of their lives, even though their absolute living standards will improve considerably.

The resulting discontent will be strong and lasting, as experience of former Soviet states testifies. The hagiographic biographies of Generalissimo Stalin constitute a large part of the best-sellers in the Russian book market these days. Most people who admire these stories and feel nostalgic about the grandeur of the Soviet era actually live remarkably better-off lives than they had under the communist regime, and far better then their grandparents, the subjects of Stalin, could even dream about living.

Nonetheless, they take the current material benefits (and right to read uncensored books) for granted while feeling sorry about the loss of established order, collapse of their beliefs and deep wounds inflicted on Russia?s national pride. It is not incidental that in the past decade the word "democracy" has become a popular term of abuse in Russian parlance: it is associated with real or perceived national humiliation, social disruption, corruption and instability.

There are few doubts that reforms in a Chinese-controlled North Korea will produce a fast and remarkable improvement in the living standards - much as has happened in Vietnam and China itself. However, if those reforms are undertaken without unification with the South, the North Koreans will not compare their state and their consumption level with those of rich South, but rather with their own sorry past, and as a result they will have less psychological reason for discontent.

As an added benefit, the discontent when it arises will be channeled not against a democratically elected national government but against a regime that will be clearly a dictatorship, forcefully imposed by a foreign power, and largely consisting of Kim Jong Il's ex-officials - that is, people responsible for earlier abuses and economic disasters. These opportunistic puppets will make convenient scapegoats, and this will mean that ideas of liberal democracy will not become seriously discredited. Meanwhile, the South will be seen as a land of prosperity, beacon of democracy and a truly national polity.

Beside, under such a regime there will be many more opportunities for starting a genuine pro-democracy movement inside North Korea. China might be an authoritarian state, but it is far cry from present-day North Korea, arguably still the least free society on the face of Earth.

A measure of political liberalization is unavoidable if one wants to reform a Stalinist system: a functioning market economy cannot exist in a society where for a trip outside the country one has first to apply for police permission and then wait for days (or even weeks) until such permission is issued, as is still technically the case in North Korea.

Greater freedoms means that dissenters will be at least able to gather information, publish or read some hitherto underground material, or even stage occasional strikes and pickets - like the situation in the USSR and East Europe in the Brezhnev era of the 1970s. Nowadays in North Korea every potential dissenter just goes to prison, sometimes accompanied by his or her entire family, well before he or she undertakes any kind of meaningful action. Chinese dissenters gather press conferences in their kitchens - North Koreans disappear without trace.

Therefore, the emergence of a pro-Chinese regime will bring not only much better life for the masses but create greater freedom and more opportunities for pro-democracy activities. In the long run, such activities are likely to lead to the regime's collapse and democratic revolution.

Similar things happened in East Europe where the pro-Soviet puppet governments, being quite soft and permissive by the earlier Stalinist standards, were eventually overthrown by the local opposition when the changes in the USSR made open intervention in its neighbors unlikely. This is not impossible in the North Korea we now talk about. We might even feel a bit sorry for the regime that will have to do all the dirty work of reforms while getting rather bad publicity, but perhaps we should not worry too much: the Chinese will help themselves to the natural resources, while their North Korean collaborators enrich themselves remarkably as well.

The author does not want to be misunderstood: the above-mentioned Chinese scenario is definitely not the best possible. The author still believes that a full unification with the South, perhaps managed through some kind of provisional confederation, would be the best solution: even though it will bring a lot of suffering and contradiction in the short term, in the long term it will mean that all problems will be solved faster and with greater efficiency.

However, to reach such a unification a lot of determination and political will is needed from the South, and none is present so far. The policy of the South Korean government over the past 10 years has been deliberately aimed at postponing unification, seen as a source of great troubles, and it remains to be seen whether South Korea will be able and willing to assume responsibilities and risks in case of a major crisis. If this happens, South Korea should be supported, since the speedy solution of the North Korean problem is in everybody's interest.

However, if the South evades that responsibility, Chinese involvement is not the worst option. A civil war in a nuclear state is far worse, and the indefinite continuation of the current impoverished lives of the North Koreans is hardly better.

Andrei Lankov is an associate professor in Kookmin University, Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacifica and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.