News delay over killings of Chinese residents by North Korean suspect 'hurt government's credibility'
The delay in releasing news about last month’s killing of four Chinese residents in a border town by a suspected North Korean army deserter had damaged the credibility of China’s government and media, a state-own newspaper claims.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported yesterday the suspect, who reportedly crossed the border in search of food, was in custody after being shot and wounded by Chinese police after shooting to death the residents in a robbery in Helong late last month.
“It obviously should not be the case that four Chinese citizens were killed more than one week ago, yet this was revealed by irrelevant South Korean media, while Chinese authorities have no information at all,” an editorial in the Chinese newspaper Global Times, owned by the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, said.
Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean official saying that Chinese authorities had reached agreement with North Korea not to report news of the killings.
The Global Times editorial said that sensitivity over bilateral relations between China and North Korea could be the reason why Chinese authorities had remained silent about the case.
“However, the North Korean soldier represented neither the North Korean government, nor the North Korean people,” the editorial added.
“What does it have to do with the relations between China and North Korea?
“He must be convicted if he has committed robbery and murder.”
Yesterday, China – in its first public comment about the case – said it was lodging a formal complaint with Pyongyang.
Hua Chunying, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said: “We’ve lodged a protest with North Korea and Chinese authorities are dealing with the issue according to the law.”
Bilateral relations between the two Communist neighbours, who share a border stretching more than 1,400km, are believed to have become strained since North Korea’s carried out nuclear tests early last year.
However, China still is still North Korea’s most important ally – as well as the main food supplier and trade partner to the world’s most closed-off nation.
“Ties between China and North Korea should adopt to convention,” the editorial said. “But if the North Koreans fails to adopt it, we should help to guide it, rather than excessively acquiescing to them.
“If we fail to insist on common sense, China will have to pay for doubts and disputes that arise in our own society.”
Meanwhile, further details about the killings were revealed by mainland media today, with The Beijing News quoting local officials as saying that the four people who died in Nanping were two elderly couples, whose children were working in South Korea.
A village official told the newspaper that the suspect, who had carried a knife and a handgun, broke into the home of a villager, with the surname of Che, and ate food and stole 100 yuan (about HK$125).
The suspect had also taken away pork from another villager’s refrigerator, the newspaper reported.
