I recently returned
from a trip to the Sino-North Korean border region. China and the North share a border of roughly 1300 km in length, and I briefly saw it all; from the mouth of the Yalu River at
Dandong all the way to the culmination of the Tumen River at Fangchuan.
 Sinuiju, seen from across the Yalu River in Dandong. | All images: Ahn Jong Sik |
 The railway bridge connecting Russian and North Korea, as seen from Fangchuan in China. |
The relationship between North Korea and China is often referred to as a blood
alliance. The term reinforces a political point: that North Korea supported China’s socialist revolution, and China and
North Korea fought side by side in the 6.25 [Korean] War. However, the feeling
I got as I traversed this lengthy frontier was that, quite apart from this
political relationship, the two are strongly bound by a geographical relationship.
 Two North Koreans in a small boat on the Yalu River. |
Following the
Yalu upstream from Dandong, one finds a long, narrow river that goes from a few tens of meters in some
places down to just a handful of meters in others. There are guard posts on the
North Korean side and barbed wire entanglements on the Chinese, but surely not enough
to stop the peoples of the two states from travelling back and forth. North
Korea and China live in a single neighbourhood divided by a narrow river; one where
people can and do travel back and forth frequently.
 When the river narrows, the security increases on both sides. |
At the customs house
in Hunchun, where a cross-border bridge connects to the village of Wonjeong-ri on the North
Korean side, there was a line of freight trucks waiting to enter the North and
trade. The
UN has a raft of sanctions against the North, and Sino-North Korean relations
are in an antagonistic mode these days, but in Hunchun trade goes on 365 days a year.
“Quantities of trade with North Korea are a secret, but I can tell you the
volume is rising,” one municipal official told me. “North Korea’s relations
with Russia are better than with China these days, but North Korea knows the fluid
international situation, and will develop relations with both China and Russia just the same.”
 North Korean guard posts are just visible across the water. |
There are quite a lot of North Korean
workers in China these days, working to earn hard currency for themselves and
the authorities. An anonymous figure in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous
Prefecture said, “The
estimate is that around 20,000 North Korean laborers are here, and it looks set
to increase further.” The amount of money North Korea earns in this way is
significant, even more so when one factors in all the North Korean restaurants
and bars in regions of China.
 The border customs house near Hunchun. |
Relations between North Korea and China may
not be what they once were, but we would be unwise to assume too much. The two sides talk endlessly across
every inch of their 1000+ km border, and through trade and exchanges they map the
development of the northeastern region. We must keep an eye on the possibility
of instability in the Kim Jong Eun system, but it is an awkward obsession that by ramping up the pressure and deepening North Korea’s isolation, the country will
soon collapse.
