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Report from the Yalu River
North Korean mainland.
I am currently in China right now. I visited Dandong yesterday which sits at the border of China and North Korea on the Yalu River. There I went on a tourist attraction where you take a boat on the Yalu river and get to see a close up of the North Korean shoreline. The section of river where we were at was in-between the North Korean mainland and an island that is owned by NK. So at some point on the boat journey the shore on my right was North Korea, and the shore on my left was North Korea. I was just a little squeamish given that I was only the non-Chinese on the boat and a US passport holder at that.
As the tourist guide announced something overhead in Mandarin everyone laughed on the boat. A Chinese friend said they laughed because the tourist guide pointed out a North Korean girl riding a bike must be “rich” because most people in North Korea cannot afford a bike. On the North Korean mainland I saw a line of people walking past a guard and showing him some kind of document, most of these people were on foot but some were walking with their bikes.
Border guard post.
All throughout the North Korean border were little teal-colored guard posts that according to the tourist guide had at least seven soldiers in them each. There were several smaller Chinese speed boats zipping around us also full of tourist wearing bright orange life jackets — almost all Chinese. The North Korean boats were rusted and moved much slower, the people in them wore the expected drab colors and visibly appeared less chubby then the Chinese even from a distance.
I later got to walk up a carefully reconstructed portion of the Great Wall of China that sits next to the Yalu river and very close to North Korea. Walking up the Great Wall you could see much further into North Korea. When you got to the top there was a man in military fatigues who would let you look into very large pair binoculars into North Korea. At this point the sun was shining brighter and the visibility was better. I saw a smoke stack in the distance, people working in the fields who always seemed to be picking at something on the ground with their bare hands.
North Korea, just across the water.
As we descended down the Great Wall there was an area where one could take a side path that apparently led very close to the North Korean line. It lead down a rocky trail that contained a metal rail which kept you falling down the hill side and into the Yalu River. As we descended the Yalu river became very narrow and very close. I could see the border guard just across the river (now more like a stream) looking at me with his binoculars. I joked about pretending to act like I was a Russian. We continued to walk down the trail until we made it onto flatter ground where we could sit in a nice patio area facing the Yalu River. We saw some people on the North Korean side drive by on motorcycles, I started waving and one of the ladies on the back of the motorcycle waved back.
The trail then finally led to gift shop that sold a number of North Korean items, including a little North Korean dress that I bought for my daughter. There were actually several such shops all throughout the border area.
The main thing that struck me about the trip was how strange the Chinese also see North Korea. People in the West often gawk at North Korea like it’s some kind of strange, exotic prison kingdom, and it seemed to me that, if they were being honest, the Chinese people’s opinion of North Korea is not far from that.
Published in Foreign Policy
Good post. Thanks, SBS.
Fascinating report. Could you post a link to a Google map of the location of your visit to the border?
Yes, fascinating. Map coordinates would be good. And photos, too, if you were allowed to take any.
Thanks!
Sure it was near Dandong China. Here is a Link
Yes I am trying to post a video I made, I actually took a far amount of video but uploading has been difficult.
Yalu
My connection just got better. This is where we went off on the side trail and this part of the Yalu became much more narrow.
Wow. That is a very narrow part of the river in the video. One could swim across that with no trouble at all.
Very nice. It looks like you could cross it easily. I suppose coming back would be more difficult.
Thanks for posting it.
Thank you for sharing this experience with us!
Fascinating, thank you.
Awesome. Thanks.
So much horror, yet a tranquil appearance from afar. Like a house in the neighborhood that is well maintained on the outside but upon entering one finds the Manson family.
One of my medical students who is Chinese told me several years ago that the area of China that is close to NK is also very poor. That is one reason why refugees are not welcome. Did you see any evidence of that ? She was my student a few years ago, maybe 8.
That looks like the upper part of a river delta, where the river is in the form of shifting ribbons (probably not the correct technical term). It would be hard to have an international border along a river in a place like that where the river channels shift, except it also seems that there is a hard edge to this delta on the Chinese side, formed by the edge of a hilly region. That seems to be where the international border is located, and is the region where you were. If that’s floodplain on the NK side of this border, it should be extraordinarily rich farmland, of the kind amenable to large-scale, mechanized agriculture. Yet from your description it sounds as though it was being worked by manual labor. And this being North Korea, I’ll bet it’s not because the land is being worked by yeoman freeholders.
It’s strange that the border is a tourist attraction. The only other example that comes to mind is the Berlin Wall. Even in that case, were there gift shops along the wall? Presumably the Checkpoint Charlie Museum has one.
It’s a huge tourist draw, to go into a tunnel at the DMZ, and look through the airlock type door at the ugly-ass ‘roid monster the Norks have on the other side. I never went, but it was on the lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo’s punch-list when she came to visit when I was stationed in S Korea.
I visited the other side, the DMZ, when I was stationed there. Maybe it was psychological, but when I saw the giant flagpole at Gijeong-dong on a foggy day I felt like I was looking into Mordor.
Its not the Bejing but Dandong did NOT seem particular depressed.
Thank you for posting this. I am hopeful that President Trump’s posture with China (solve the North Korea problem or I will cause you problems with the US market) will have positive results. I pray for the people of North Korea all of the time. I hope that somehow they are brought into this century and past starvation
As far as I’m concerned they can live in whatever century they want. Not starving would be good, though. Freedom would be even better.
How did you come to be there? Did you want to get as close as you could to NK? Have Chinese friends?
Obviously I am from the United States. I am doing a medical rotation with a group in Shenyang, China. I wanted to go to the Chinese-NK border and a girl offered to take me to Dandong on a weekend day trip. I also got to see The NK city of Sinuiju that is across from Dandong, and the famous ‘friendship’ bridge that was left broken after the U.S. bombed it during the Korean War.
From seeing it on the ground your description makes sense. The fields looked beautiful in the river valley, while the surrounding hills had a more menacing appearance. This part of Asia, (as I assume is common in most of East China), often has limited visibility often due to fog/smog. The hills had little in the ways of shrubs or trees. In China they often plant trees to help prevent erosion.
I’m immature enough to say…that sounds so dirty…
When we were walking on the narrow path on the rocky hill side (it had a lot little caves) I felt like I was a hobbit walking up to the gate of Mordor. I even asked my Chinese friend if she had every seen Lord of the Rings, she hadn’t so sadly I didn’t get to make the reference. :(
My brother adopted two Chinese toddlers in the early 00s, and we went back on a “heritage” tour in 2013. Our first stop, before we entered the PRC, was Seoul. Our father had served in the USMC during the “police action” in 1953, and I had studied some of his letters and notes in preparation for the trip.
Standing on a hill he “held” was surreal as I looked at his two adopted Chinese grandchildren and I wondered what he would think today (he passed in 1990). In talking with our ROK guide, I asked if the South dreamed of a day when they would be reunited and families could see each other again.
He reminded me that almost everyone who experienced a united Korea is dead, and that after watching what Germany went through in the 1990s and 2000s, there is almost NO desire in the South for reunification since the North is such a basket case. I wonder if the Chinese are tiring of “supporting” them as well. Trump may be on fertile ground on this subject with the Chinese. Not sure what the next most desirable step would be…
Outstanding story and pictures – thank you so much! Glad you didn’t slip going down the metal guardrail into NK- not sure which Ricochet members we’d send to get you out! Probably Boss….
A few years back I read a fascinating story where Google CEO and his daughter were invited in. They were taken on a well-staged tour. She said they walked into an office building (no heat in any buildings except palace) in winter. They entered but no one looked up. It was a sea of “employees facing computer screens”, made to look like they were working. But when they walked up the aisle, she noticed all the computer screens had the same thing on them. The leader is actually worshiped like a god – they are brainwashed.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/20/3896570/sophie-schmidt-reports-on-north-korea-trip
Too bad Google killed Picassa, or we’d be able to look at the photos she took.
In these times, to know that a tyrant is essentially starving his people on purpose and blaming others for these conditions is unbelievable. After reading one account of a person who escaped, I can’t get the image out of my mind of a person eating tree bark and grass.