Looking at the North Korean Problem From a Chinese Border City

The symbiotic relationship between Chinese and North Korean traders in Dandong reflects the complex issues at stake. Perched on China’s riverine frontier with North Korea, Dandong is awash with the exotic. The entrepôt of 2.5 million is famed for North Korean contraband such as blueberry liquor, cigarettes and medicinal sea cucumbers—plus frog oil, which fetches $450 per kilo. However, China signed up to unprecedented U.N. economic sanctions in March, following Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test. The daily convoys of sooty trucks that rumble over Dandong’s iron bridge—bringing coal, minerals and assorted oddities from the secretive Stalinist state—have slowed to a trickle. Read more