The city of Dandong, on China’s north eastern border, offers a glimpse of how the black economy may be transforming North Korea – and it’s not only the humans who want to sample Chinese life.
Along the north eastern Chinese border city of Dandong, China and North Korea are divided by the Yalu river and coarse barbed wire, writes Channel 4 News Beijing producer Danny Vincent.
But many parts of the river that separate the two countries are just a few feet wide. And it’s perhaps the only place on the planet where you can have an unsupervised conversation with a North Korean.
The villagers that live along the Chinese border are used to North Korean soldiers on their doorstep. The soldiers are dotted along the banks, guarding the border – and, of course, preventing people leaving. Chinese villagers live only yards away.
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It’s hard to know what is going on in the secretive state, but from Dandong, you get a glimpse of how the black market economy may be transforming society.
North Korean watchers say illegal trading is weakening state control of the economy. They say a small merchant class may one day come to challenge the Kim family’s monopoly on power. Their very existence breaks the government myth that the country is totally self-reliance.
Underground markets are fuelled by the government’s “military first” policy that ensures that ordinary citizens lack the basic necessities needed for every day life.
The soldiers along the border mostly talk shop. Cigarettes provide the most basic form of currency and are thrown back and forth between the two countries. A large box of North Korean cigarettes can be sold to Chinese farmers for around £10.
The farmers buy memorabilia from the soldiers to sell to tourists at significantly marked up prices. The North Koreans buy anything from rice to face cream.
At night North Korean soldiers tasked with shooting would be defectors, cross the streams under the cover of darkness to drink and eat with the farmers.
One farmer told me that to the astonishment of their Chinese hosts, many of the soldiers would finish off a large bottle of Chinese white liquor in just three mouthfuls.
They often complain about their broken economy and disillusioned nation, villagers said, but they always crossed the border and went back home. Even after a night of heavy drinking. Punishment for defecting is severe in a country where entire families are imprisoned for the political crimes of their kin.
Mr Han, an elderly Chinese farmer, recalls that one evening a North Korean soldier brought his dog across the river to sell to his Chinese neighbour for cash. After a few weeks of living on the Chinese side, the dog decided to swim back across the stream. Villagers joked that he had defected back to North Korea.
Chinese authorities arrest and repatriate any defectors it finds in Dandong. But for the soldiers that cross the river in darkness, their DIY capitalism may be beginning to change a country.