North Korea, China Ties Worry Seoul

North Korea is becoming ever more reliant on China after playing a high-stakes poker game this year with a second nuclear test and launching missiles despite repeated warnings from the international community.

China watchers say Pyongyang's ever-growing dependency on Beijing is a combined result of the latter's strategic regional development plan in its three northeastern provinces near the border ― Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang ― and the North's brinkmanship diplomacy.

North Korea's bilateral trade with China accounted for approximately 50 percent of its entire trade with foreign nations in 2008.

About 76 percent of bilateral trade took place in the three impoverished provinces near the border where about two million ethnic Koreans reside. In the city of Yanbian in Jilin Province, the Korean language is widely used.