High hopes at China's gateway to N.Korea as trains resume

Peter Catterall, Agence France-Presse

Now retired, Wang Meili wants to see the world — including North Korea, the reclusive nation that lies across the river from her lifelong home in northeastern China. North Korea has long kept tight control over foreign visitors, and effectively sealed its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic six years ago. It has since partly reopened and restored daily passenger train services with China this month, but has not yet resumed issuing tourism visas to Chinese citizens, who once made up the bulk of its overseas visitors.

"We'd like to get visas to go. I've already got my passport," said 68-year-old Wang, who grew up in the border city of Dandong. In another apparent sign of North Korea's reopening, Air China is set to resume flights to Pyongyang on Monday. But for now, only those with work or study visas can go. AFP journalists in Dandong, the main gateway for cross-border travel and trade, saw a mostly empty passenger train rattle over a bridge into North Korea this week.

Nearby, tourists on another bridge, partly destroyed by US bombs during the Korean War, posed for photographs and peered through binoculars at the North Korean city of Sinuiju on the opposite shore. Tour boats took curious sightseers to gaze at North Koreans cycling along the Yalu river separating the two countries or cleaning boats on the bank. Uniformed guards stood at regular points along the boundary.

Li Shuo, the manager of a Dandong-based travel agency, said the resumption of passenger train services had had "no impact" on his business. Unable to run tours into North Korea, he has been offering trips through border areas so customers can catch glimpses into the secretive state from a distance.

"We can only wait for news" on tourism visas, Li said, adding that they "would be a good thing for domestic tourists". "Many people want to go," he said. Others were less keen. One Chinese tourist from the northeastern city of Shenyang told AFP that a peek at North Korea from Dandong was close enough for him.

"It's totalitarian over there, the people are brainwashed," he said, declining to provide his name given the sensitivity of the topic and his public-sector job. "Actually, there's brainwashing here in China too, but it's not as severe," he said.

AFP also spoke to tourists from outside mainland China — including Hong Kong, Japan and Australia — all drawn to Dandong for a rare view of the country it borders. Louis Lamb, a 22-year-old nurse from Brisbane, told AFP that travelling into North Korea was "a bucket-list item".

"You can see (North Korea) from a certain perspective in what we see from our media," said Lamb, adding that he would like to experience the country for himself. Although stretches of the opposite riverbank appeared "desolate", he said, "it's a lot more developed than I thought".

China is a major backer for diplomatically isolated North Korea, though Pyongyang has notably drawn closer to Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. But trade with China, much of it through Dandong, is a key lifeline for North Korea's moribund economy, under UN sanctions because of its nuclear weapons programme.

Cross-border shipments swelled to $2.7 billion last year and have nearly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, according to Chinese customs data. AFP journalists saw a steady stream of trains and freight trucks hauling cargo from Dandong to Sinuiju.

For some in Dandong, North Korea's tentative reopening kindled hope of returning home. Thousands of North Koreans are thought to reside in the city of two million people, despite sanctions banning them from working overseas. North Korea's abrupt border closure in 2020 stranded many of them abroad for years, and Pyongyang later beefed up defences along the frontier to dissuade illegal crossings. Staff at a North Korean restaurant in Dandong forbade AFP journalists from filming or taking photos of a large screen showing a patriotic music and dance performance.

One waitress from Pyongyang told AFP she had been in China for over six years without returning home. Western experts say such workers endure miserable living and working conditions, have their movements restricted and see most of their wages commandeered by the North Korean state. But after a long wait, travel between the two nations now seemed to be getting easier, the waitress said, declining to give her name. "I'll be going home soon."