North Korea's Economic Boom? What I Saw on the China Border Shocked Me | Silk and Steel

Ali TM (0:00)

Okay, first of all, thank you very much for joining us. After a long, long time, Carl Zha, you're back from a trip from China. How was it?

Carl Zha (0:08)

It was great. Actually, my friend from Taiwan, Xiang Yu, he started a tour company, and he invited me to tag along for his very first tour in China, which we actually went to the border between China and North Korea.

A path off the beaten path. I know this area from books, from reading, but I have never been to the area north of the Great Wall. It was a first time for me, and it was quite eye-opening. I travel along the Yalu River, which divides the border between China and North Korea. I actually saw a lot of high rises on the other side of the border in North Korea. I mean, there are plenty of high rises on the Chinese border. I was surprised to see high rises on the North Korean side, and at night, I went there at night, and they actually led up. So that Internet meme about how North Korea is just one black hole at night, that seems to be out of date. I talked to locals, a lot of them told me all those high rises was built in the last few years. And just four years, four days before our arrival, the new bridge across the Yalu River connecting China and North Korea has been open to traffic. Now, I say open, new bridge, it was actually built and completed in 2014, but the connecting road on the North Korean side has never been completed. So the bridge kind of sat around for 12 years, no traffic, but now the traffic, the connecting road on the other side is finally completed.

One day after we left, Kim Jong Un actually drove a car across that bridge to meet with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the Chinese side of the border. So this is a big deal because again, it confirms that the recent Western mainstream media reporting that North Korean economy is indeed booming, and there's several reasons for that. One is because North Korea has tightened their relationship with Russia, they have been sending soldiers to fight in Russia, they have been selling Russian a lot of ammunitions, weapons, and they're receiving a lot of Russian currency in return. And on the other side, it doesn't look like China is no longer strictly enforcing the UN's sanctions on North Korea anymore, like a few years back. So there's a lot more trade flows. We saw many trucks crossing the bridge, and there's still not much human traffic.

I don't want to say human traffic, and there's still not many tourist traffic between the two countries because North Korea tourism remain close to all countries except for Russians. So right now, there's still a lot of Chinese businessmen going over to North Korea to do business, but you can't go to North Korea on a tourist visa yet. Although I heard from many sources that North Korea might be open up for tourism next year sometimes. So keep your finger crossed.

And it was also very interesting to see, for example, we went to Yanbian, a Korean autonomous prefecture in China, which borders Russia and North Korea. And one of the famous local specialty in Yanbian is Pollack fish, dry Pollack fish. Yanbian is landlocked, right? So this Pollack ocean fish apparently came from somewhere. So it turns out they're mostly come from either Russia or North Korea. And Yanbian is now one of the China's largest processing center for those fish. You know, because all this trade was coming across the border. So this actually bodes pretty well for all these countries, all these three countries. There's apparently a lot more tighter integration going on on the ground. And also from the China side, I went to the China, Russia, North Korea, tribe border junction. I saw the new railroad bridge was built between connecting Russia and North Korea, and we saw traffic. So yeah, there's a lot of things that's happening that goes unreported in the Western mainstream media. And I was glad to see it firsthand. So yeah, that's my trip.

Ali TM (5:06)

So how many other border crossings does China have with North Korea? Is this the only one?

Carl Zha (5:12)

No, there's multiple border crossings. So actually, I've been to both, you know, I've been to Yanbian, which, like I mentioned, borders Korea and Russia across the Tumen River. But I also travel south to the Yalu River, which divides China and North Korea. And one thing I learned was very interesting is, Yalu River is a boundary line. But by treaty, China and North Korea actually share the navigation right of the river, which means there's no like border midline. So there's ships on the river. They can cross the midline. The Chinese ship can cross the midline to the North Korean side. The North Korean ship can cross the midline to the Chinese side of the river. As long as they don't land, it's fine. So there's actually Chinese tourist boat, that take tourists, that goes as close as possible to the North Korean shore, where you can see the North Koreans going up out their business, and you can wave to them. And I think that's probably right now the closest for anybody to observe what's going on in North Korea.