Products made in North Korea are now being exported to China and appearing on store shelves there. North Korean traders have been actively seeking outlets for various North Korean products.
Currently, North Korean products can be found in stores across parts of Liaoning and Jilin provinces, areas where North Korean traders have established a significant presence.
The North Korean items displayed on the Chinese store’s shelves included Mount Kumgang Conditioner, made by the Mount Kumgang Joint Venture; Pyongyang Fermented Soy Sauce, produced at the Taedonggang Food Factory; Corn Soda from the Rason Ryongson General Processing Factory; and 500ml bottles of black tea produced in Namsa village, Rangrang district, Pyongyang.
In a sign of increasing economic partnership between the two nations, construction of a Road Bridge has been planned, and a contract has been awarded to a contractor. The bridge is to be completed by the end of 2026.
North Korea’s only land connection to Russia is a single rail bridge, so a road crossing is expected to increase trade and tourism once it is connected to a road network.
A similar road bridge, the New Yalu, was built between North Korea and China about 10 years ago, but has yet to open because the Koreans have not built a road at their end. As a result, all traffic between the two countries must use the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge, completed in 1943.
Building a road bridge has been a recurring feature of Russian-Korean relations.
The opacity of North Korean society—with outsiders having limited access to the country. North Korean citizens are often only seen as the victims—powerless and disconnected from the rest of the world. Because of this perception, decades of international efforts to engage and access the restrictive state have neglected to consider its people as a key partner in effecting change inside North Korea.
However, evidence over the past two decades has shown that the North Korean people have survived poverty and repression by becoming more independent from the regime, claiming greater agency over their own lives. Recognizing the people are an integral part of the solution to security, human rights and humanitarian challenges in North Korea, the international community needs to do more than just stand on the side of North Korean citizens; it needs to empower them so that that they can play a key role in holding the regime accountable.
North Korea has reopened tourism in the special economic zone of its northeastern border city Rason to foreign tourists, the website of a China-based travel agency showed Friday.
“North Korea has reopened tourism in Rason, it’s Special Economic Zone in the northeast of the country, according to our local DPRK partners,” the website of Young Pioneer Tours, a travel company specializing in North Korea tours, said. DPRK stands for the official name of North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The official reopening is technically effective” from Thursday, it said, adding that this is only a “breaking story” and “things could change rapidly in the coming days.”
“Rason, the oldest and largest of North Korea’s 29 economic development zones, has been central to the country’s push to attract foreign investment. It has one of North Korea’s first and biggest markets, was the site of the country’s first mobile network, and is the only place where North Korea legalised buying and selling homes in 2018, according to experts and North Korea’s government publications. Once a North Korean experiment in limited capitalism, the Rason Special Economic Zone appears to be the epicentre of the isolated country’s growing cooperation with Russia, experts say, including possible shipments of arms for the war in Ukraine.
In recent months, there have been clear signs that the area is poised for a comeback, with ships docking there for the first time since 2018, and satellite imagery suggesting a spike in trade from both the port and a rail line to Russia.
Although China – with its vastly larger economy and deeper historic ties with North Korea – might seem the obvious driver of a recovery in Rason, experts say the country’s deepening cooperation with Russia may make a more immediate impact.
“Now that North Korea and Russia are becoming very close against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, Russia might send more tourists to North Korea, which can reinvigorate tourism (in Rason),” said Jeong Eunlee, a North Korea economy expert at South Korea’s government-run Korea Institute for National Unification.
People in North Korea have told the BBC food is so scarce their neighbours have starved to death.
Exclusive interviews gathered inside the world’s most isolated state suggest the situation is the worst it has been since the 1990s, experts say.
The government sealed its borders in 2020, cutting off vital supplies. It has also tightened control over people’s lives, our interviewees say.
Pyongyang told the BBC it has always prioritised its citizens’ interests.
The BBC has secretly interviewed three ordinary people in North Korea, with the help of the organisation Daily NK which operates a network of sources in the country. They told us that since the border closure, they are afraid they will either starve to death or be executed for flouting the rules. It is extremely rare to hear from people living in North Korea.
