Gasoline prices in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang jumped by as much as 83 percent within three days on the back of reports that China is mulling over an oil embargo for its unruly neighbor. North Korea imports almost all the oil it uses from China, so an embargo will effectively paralyze the country, even if Pyongyang turns to Russia for alternative supplies or resorts to smuggling—neither of which would provide North Korea with adequate supplies of the fuel, one analyst from the Asia Research Center at the Yanbian University said. Beijing has in recent months taken a tougher stance against Pyongyang, regional analysts note , but not because the U.S. is pushing it to do it, rather because an increasingly belligerent North Korea is a direct and potentially serious threat to China’s own national security. The change in stance is in fact a change in priorities, according to the […]