Globetrotters

Living Next to North Korea

Three months in Dandong, China

Through the steam of my coffee, I looked out at the North Korean border. A few ant-sized people walked about (probably soldiers), a defunct Ferris wheel stood still in the morning light, and brown hills stretched out around the small town.

I checked out the window on the other side of the apartment and saw a Chinese police van parked down below. It had been there since we moved in weeks ago. I never saw another street corner with a permanent cop presence in the neighborhood, just outside the building where the foreigners were staying.

I went for my morning run. Icy steam blew out of my mouth as I raced along the Yalu River. To my right, elderly folk were already up, practicing tai-chi in the park, moving gracefully with their swords. To my left was the river, and a short distance across, North Korea. From this vantage point, I could see the soldiers now, holding their automatic rifles and standing at attention. I try to take a picture, only to be told off by a Chinese policeman and shooed away.

I went home and tried to go back up to my floor. The elevator was broken. The staircase was also chained off. Firehazard anyone?

I didn’t have a phone (hence the limited amount of pics I have from that time) to call my roommates so I just went to the market till the lift was up and running. The market was the first floor of the apartment complex. Chinese women selling jiaozu (dumplings in soup) called out to me in Russian. I never corrected them, it was probably better for people to not assume I was American.

Some unknown crustaceans were crawling around the floor, having escaped their water tanks. Live chickens were strung up over a counter with one being butchered right in front of me. The blood ran on the floor in front of their stand, washed away with buckets of water which splashed up on my shoes. Reminder to self: never eat anything that has touched this floor. Good common sense advice in general, life-saving in this circumstance.

This was my neighborhood for three months.

The city of Dandong

I lived in the city of Dandong, China. It lies right on the border with North Korea, the two nations separated by the natural border of the Yalu River. Dandong is in north-east China and it's fracking cold up there in the winter. The population runs just shy of a million, making it a fairly small Chinese city.

What was I doing there? Can’t tell you. It involved some service work that the Chinese government wouldn’t have approved of for ideological reasons. Nothing dramatically illegal, but something that could’ve gotten me and the group I was with deported.

During the time I lived there, Kim Jung-Il was still alive. He passed through our city once and ruined my travel plans. I had bought a bus ticket to Beijing for a solo vacation I had planned on taking. The day that I was supposed to leave all bus tickets were canceled (no refunds) because an “important VIP” was going to be traveling alongside the highway by train. Later found out that it was the North Korean dictator and all traffic was stopped to make sure no one assassinated him.

The city itself is a blend between China and Korea. Korean restaurants dot the neighborhoods, run by ethnic Koreans who were on the China side by the time North Korea became a thing. Korean bathhouses were everywhere. I was told to never discuss politics or religion while at these places in case spies (Chinese or North Korean) were chilling there that day.

The dumbest mistake of my life

I technically visited North Korea once while I lived in Dandong. There’s a section of the Great Wall of China that stretches out to China’s eastern territory. Few people know about this. If you visit the Wall in Beijing be prepared to wade through hundreds if not thousands of tourists. Out north of Dandong, I only saw ten people. Most of the wall is a reconstruction though, not the “authentic” original one.

This part of the wall rides right up to the Yalu River. In Dandong, the river is way too wide to hop or swim over…easily. Out in the boondocks, it becomes a trickle that even my grandma could jump.

So, me and a few friends walked down a slope to the skinny part of the Yalu. Some Chinese women are washing clothes in it. We get ready to jump and they shout at us. One of my friends was Chinese and he said they’re warning us not to cross into North Korean territory. We, being absolute geniuses, ignore them. Not recommended.

A few quick leaps through the water and we’re on the other side. We go up the embankment to an electrified fence with Korean, Chinese, and English signs saying that this is the North Korean border, turn back or be arrested. There was a hole in the fence big enough for my hand to go through. And through it went. My right hand has now been to North Korea. Satisfied with this we head back. However, we notice security cameras up in the trees, pointed right at us.

Shit.

We book it down the hill, across the river, and back up the hill on the Chinese side, the clothes-washing women taking at us. In the distance we see a group of Chinese soldiers walking, briskly, in our direction. We poo our pants, run to the road, flag down a driver, and offer him $100 to drive us to the city — now — he agrees, we get in, and off we go to safety. I say safety, but for the next six weeks that I lived in China, I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that one day my door was going to get kicked in and I was going to be hauled away to a labor camp.

Do I recommend Dandong?

Absolutely.

The city is an eclectic mix of all things Chinese, with North Korean influence all over, yet aside from my stupid mistakes, I never felt in danger for any reason. Everyone I met was nice. The food was great. And you’ll see a side of China, while not countryside, a much more manageable city than the likes of Beijing.

Thank you for reading! If you like what you read, please check out my other writings here. I also write on my Substack “Ninja Nomad”, with a focus on Japan with some of North-East Asia thrown in.