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What do you do in the absence of data? You try to get as much as you can, you go to the places you talk to as many people as possible, you read the press, but you also have to look back at what happened the last time North Korea collapsed because I think there's a

playbook there. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing

on the stories to the global world order,

North Korea is perhaps the most dangerous. The regime's nuclear ambitions unchecked by sanctions

and sunshine policies seem dangerously close to fruition.

As the DPRK grows over closer to become a nuclear power, many in the world have looked

to China to curb the ambitions of its neighbor. Here to help us sort through all of this is Chinese history expert Adam Cathcart.

Adam Cathcart is a historian and lecturer at the University of Leeds in England

and has spent the past few months researching North Korea's special relationship with China.

Adam, thank you so much for joining us.

My pleasure, thanks for having me. Okay, so my first question is why do people want China to handle the North Korean situation?

Well, China's always had a lot of influence on the Korean Peninsula historically,

but I think most of the requests and the pressure that we see on China from Washington, D.C. and other places like Japan and even South Korea is more rooted in understanding that China has grown in power in the last 20 or 30 years in particular

and that the trade balances and other things since the fall of the Soviet Union have really

fallen in their favor with North Korea since that time. So it's both sort of

imagined I suppose, imagine Chinese influence, but it's also rooted in a

sense of the history that goes back not just to ancient China but to the Cold War when North Korea sort of both played off and used as patrons, the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.

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