▲ Iron ore collected from the Musan mine is transported towards Naping Custom House ⓒ the Daily NK

The tax revenues of the Yanji Custom House in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture derived from trade with North Korea for the first half of this year is double that of last year.

Jilin Newspaper in China reported on the 4th that “The main country from which taxes come into the Yanji Customs House is North Korea. For the first half of this year, tax revenues vis a vis North Korea totaled 34.22 million Yuan, up 226.2 percent from the year before.

The newspaper continued, “During this period, entrepreneurs in Yanji imported 64 thousand tons of iron ore from North Korea; that is a 2.3 percent increase from the same period a year ago. Accordingly, the tax amount of collected was 29.13 million Yuan, which is 66.1 percent of the total tax revenue derived from North Korea.”

The Yanji Custom House covers seven border gateways with North Korea, such as Juanhe-Wonjeongri, Shazi-Saebyul, Tumen-Namyang, Sanhe-Hoiryeong, Kaishantun-Sambong, Naping-Musan, and Guchengli-Samjangri.

According to the Yanji Custom House statistics, the Naping-Musan border gateway, where iron ore collected from the Musan mine enters China, is the first ranked for commercial traffic, and Guchengli-Samjangri, the gateway for North Korean timber, is second.

Tonghua Steel Group, Yanbian Tianchi Trade Incorporated Compay, and Zhonggang Group purchased 50-year mining rights for North Korea’s Musan mine in 2005. Since late 2007 they had been discussing a seven billion Yuan additional investment in it but that failed due to conflicting views on cooperative investment rate proportions, methods of withdrawing invested funds and other issues. As a consequence of the stalled investment, the Musan mine’s exports to China have not grown relative to last year’s figures.