I would not put too much stock in these public display of affections (PDA). Many married couples hold hands in public while in private, their divorce attorneys works diligently to ensure each gets what he/she feels deserved.
Discount the Soviet Union for a moment. The Warsaw Pact was a more solid political entity than what we have seen in Asia. More solid and numerous. In Asia, it was pretty much China and NKR all these decades of the Cold War. And yet, despite all that public display of Marxist solidarity, once Gorby's reforms began in the Soviet Union, that alliance began to unravel, started with East Germany.
There is a classic sci-fi novel: " The Mote In God's Eye "...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye
In the novel, the symbol for Humanity is the North American bald eagle clutching the hammer and sickle. The two major starships are
MacArthur and
Lenin. The belief that communism is forever was so secured that in the minds of authors Niven and Pournelle, its symbols will endure into the future. I grew up in the era of that belief and caught up in it. Never did I thought that while in uniform, I would see the beginning of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact on CNN.
China's reforms were as necessary as Gorbachev's for the Soviet Union. No, am not saying China will break apart. China is not an alliance and if anything, China will become stronger with these reforms. But just like the Soviet Union, China is selfish and do not want stronger alliance members, scant as this alliance is, while the US want our Asian alliance members to prosper and grows. JPN and SKR at different times came to Asia's economic and financial aid. What have NKR done for the Asian communist alliance ? Nothing but being a millstone around China's neck.
If there is a lesson to be learned -- by China -- from the collapse of the Soviet Union that followed the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, is that in order to secure a geopolitical buffer entity, China must act. No matter how many heads of states watching whose parade, China must act and it will hers alone in preserving NKR as that buffer. No alleged machinations from JPN or SKR or even US will be necessary or even wanted. From the 'big picture' perspective, there are too many indicators today for NKR as there were for East Germany, notably, the economic disparity.
If China does nothing -- North Korea
WILL collapse.