Fed Up With Kim? Everybody is exasperated with North Korea's capricious leader--including his allies in Beijing.

Byline: Christian Caryl and B. J. Lee (With Sarah Schafter in Beijin and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo)

Nobody likes dealing with Kim Jong Il anymore, including those countries closestto Pyongyang. South Korea, which has for years tried to placate the North, nowadays casts a more jaundiced eye on its communist brother. Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon--the leading candidate to replace Kofi Annan as secretary-general of the United Nations--said last week that he was "frustrated and disappointed" over Pyongyang's refusal to resume talks on its suspected nuclear-weapons program. And Seoul wasn't too happy with the missile tests conducted by the North in July, which embarrassed the government of Roh Moo Hyun. Ban urged Pyongyang to be "realistic" and to "start thinking about its future."

Kim is not a realist (or a pragmatist), and that's why he's got another worry. China is also losing patience with him. Beijing, too, wants the North to return to the nuclear negotiating table--and to liberalize and expand its economy, as the People's Republic has done. North Korea's intransigence on both issues has seriously strained relations--so much so that Beijing could prove as much a threat to Kim's leadership position as the United States.

Signs of deteriorating ties abound. China has been beefing up forces and fortifications along its border with the North. Some 2,000 troops have been sent to the area in recent weeks, says a Tokyo-based analyst who asked for anonymity to protect his sources. Earlier, the Chinese military conducted its own series of missile launches in the border region not long after the North's. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have been cracking down on North Korean economic migrants, many of them working in factories in the Chinese border town of Dandong. Business people in Dandong, who wish to remain unnamed to avoid angering the Chinese authorities, say that over the past few weeks, stepped-up customs checks have reduced the erstwhile torrent of North Korean traders to a trickle.

And then there's the hot-button issue of North Korean defectors. The Chinese authorities are usually quick to send them back. But a few weeks after Pyongyang's missile tests, Beijing allowed three North Koreans who had sought asylum in a U.S. Consulate in Shenyang to leave the country--a clear sign of Chinese displeasure, say diplomats. "China is ...