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NORTH KOREA: ON THE
BORDERLINE
Part 2:
All quiet on the Dandong front
By
Alan Fung
Part 1: Soldiers head for the
frontier
HONG KONG -
Military and civil-defense maneuvers in Shenyang (the
provincial capital of Liaoning in northeastern China)
Militarized Zone since mid-August have been in the
headlines of the PLA Daily, a Chinese military organ, to
deliver a message: the People's Liberation Army is
standing ready for any challenging test.
To ram
the message home, the paper last Thursday reported on an
artillery regiment equipped with sophisticated weaponry
and techniques and recalled a momentous task one year
ago that upgraded the combat ability of the young elite
troops.
Yet the message has not daunted Dandong,
a town on the Sino-North Korean border and 300
kilometers from the provincial capital. The latest
military deployment hardly seems a concern of the
townsfolk.
The atmosphere in Dandong was
completely different from that in border towns such as
Huichun and Fangchang in Jilin province. Although these
towns were said to be free of any tense atmosphere, I
nevertheless felt some tension there after I received
many admonishments on public security and was even
prohibited from taking pictures of strategic sites. Such
an atmosphere kept reminding me to behave myself there.
In contrast, the situation in Dandong was the
other way around. No warnings, no hassle by authorities.
Everyone I met reassured me about local order and that
it was safe to go out at night. In addition, no illegal
immigrants from North Korea are ever found in Dandong, I
was told.
"If they [North Koreans] want to sneak
into China, they will not land here. As you can see, the
Yalu River is so wide and there are many North Korean
troops patrolling on the opposite side. Will they risk
losing their lives?" remarked a local resident who was
admiring the scenery across the river in North Korea. On
the opposite bank was North Korea's once-famous Sinuiju,
the fledgling special economic zone of that
poverty-stricken country. Its first but short-lived
chief executive Yang Bin, a Dutch-Chinese tulip tycoon,
is currently serving a prison term of 18 years in
Shenyang for economic crimes.
As the local resident
correctly noted, North Korea maintains tight control of
the border at this point. One night I observed that the
Korean side carried out a patrol every two hours. North
Korean troops in jeeps checked along the bank. But on
the Chinese side, there seemed to be no defense
facilities at all.
On the Chinese bank was a
park where travelers came to visit at night. Without the
North Korea souvenirs on sale in shops, no one would
recognize that this place was on the border that
separates China and North Korea, two of the most
important communist countries in the world.
The
news of military allocation flies outside from Shenyang,
while in neighboring Jinlin province, border cities such
as Yanji are sources of the news.
Changchun, the
capital of Jilin, was my first destination on this trip.
From talking with several natives, I found out that
nobody there was aware of what was happening on the
frontier with North Korea. It was not until two days
later, September 17, that a local newspaper reported in
brief Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan's claim that
China's moving of troops to the Korean border was
routine.
However, news of the deployment has
spread widely in Yanji, Tumen and other border cities
along the Tumen River, which separates Jilin province
and North Korea.
During the flight, I happened
to sit beside a passenger from Changchun. "We would all
be glad to hear that the PLA is deployed to the border
to safeguard tranquility and security, but why do they
bite their tongue on this issue?" he commented after
reading the brief report.
Outsiders have a
common misunderstanding about the border where the PLA
will assume its duties. According to a boundary treaty
signed by China, Russia and North Korea, no heavy forces
should be deployed by any of the three nations within
100 kilometers of the border. In this sense, the border
on China's side is 100km wide, instead of tens or
hundreds of meters wide as many people may believe.
Moreover, along the national expressway from
Shengyan to Dandong, a large PLA camp sits near Tongyuan
Pu, a village 110km from Dandong. Its advantageous
location would enable the PLA to respond instantly, and
allocate military forces and even armored forces, to the
border within one or two hours if war were to break out.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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