Beijing (AsiaNews) - The regime of North Korea "fears Beijing more than Washington. China is using Pyongyang to frighten the world, but is not interested in its future. We're on a train launched at breakneck speed, driven by the People's Republic and with us, South Korea and Japan on board". The speaker is a former university professor of the northern Korean Peninsula, escaped from the totalitarian rule of Kim Jong-il and currently a refugee in China. According to Choi, a fictitious name given to the interviewer, "the elite of Korean Stalinist regime is animated by a deep hatred towards China. Until recently, the relationship between the two countries was described as 'a covenant of blood', but today the reality is much clearer. They use us, they use our nuclear capability to tighten the ropes on other nations. And then they will discard us, when they no longer need us”.

Until two years ago, continues the former academic, "the population of the North believed anti-American propaganda. Now it fears becoming a slave of the Chinese, who are worse than the Americans. We were forced into poverty, we were hated by the whole world, and for what? So they could be our watchdogs. No-one cares about our security”.

Choi stresses that this "is not solely my idea: almost all North Korean intellectuals think like me. Everything started when the nuclear plans of the 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il clashed with the wishes of the Chinese. Even he agrees with what I said, so much so that is trying in every way to escape from that situation. "

Beijing's strategy “is very simple. They want to play with the international community, which is aware of the fact that Pyongyang takes orders only from China. They use the adventurism of our Republic to point missiles at everyone and then disarm us, in order to prove themselves better than the United States. Beijing has manipulated us, it has done everything to increase our arsenal of weapons: it said it was putting pressure on us, but it did the opposite. "

According to the dissident, "the aim was to bring North Korea to a level that could directly threaten, if not America, at least Japan. At that point, Beijing would have torn us to pieces, saying that the real fault lay with the other nations. On the other hand, our regime knows this well: by launching a nuclear attack, we would disappear from the face of the earth. Intellectuals succeeded in asking the government to move with caution on the subject, but until we have China breathing down our necks we are all in danger of dying".

The interview with this exiled intellectual appeared on a well known website, the North Korean Daily, which collects the testimonies of those who manage to escape the regime of Kim Jong-il. Immediately after its publication in Chinese and English, a message appeared in the window to comment on the post from a Chinese user who calls himself "a patriot". The text of the post reads: "Choi is only an ungrateful worm. The Chinese know who they are dealing with, and that is why the Koreans will never be tolerated by us".