Exploring Dandong: A View into North Korea

I followed the crowd out of the railway station to an open plaza where we were greeted by Chairman Mao. The statue must have been the tallest structure in town when it was built, but modern China has outgrown Mao: high cranes gyrated far above and forty-storey buildings dwarfed the coated figure who, with an outstretched arm, looked more like a chubby building site foreman.

I had come to Dandong in China’s northeast to see the Yalu River, the natural border separating China and North Korea, but had not reckoned on Dandong itself. It was a Sunday morning in December; the cold made the earth as hard as stone and cut through any number of layers. A cold which felt like life could not flourish; but Dandong showed otherwise. Like most cities in modern China it was a pulsating grid of honking taxis, bright malls and shops, and throngs of people. The busy, boxed-in streets offered protection from the Siberian gusts but were disorientating in trying to find what I’d come for.  

The river was everywhere: the Yalu Hotel, Yalu Taxis, a Yalu Buffet, a billboard showed a picture of a tourist boat on the river; another advertised bottles of Yalu River beer. Bars and seafood restaurants down narrower streets gave the feel of an out-of-season party town. A profusion of pawn shops and Mercedes with tinted windows and custom paint jobs gave the place a slight edge.

Eventually, at the end of a narrow street I glimpsed open space. I moved towards this, finding a busy boulevard which ran alongside the river, eventually picking my moment to dash across the three lanes of traffic.  

By the river was a pleasant promenade: a wide smooth pavement, flower beds, regular WCs. Despite the cold it was gloriously sunny; people were out jogging in Lycra or strolling wearing sunglasses and winter jackets. Piano music was being piped through loudspeakers attached to lamp posts. There were open plazas with statues. A young child in a marshmallow coat chased pigeons while her grandfather, similarly coated, watched from a bench. Traffic continued to honk and speed along. Across the busy boulevard stood glass skyscrapers, some with government logos and obvious insignia: immigration, customs, navy. There was nothing remarkable about any of this of course, it could have been any riverside in any modern country. The only remarkable thing was that a short distance across the fairly shallow-looking Yalu River was the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

I stood by the balustrade, drinking in my first glimpses of the world’s most politicised country. A small flock of birds was standing on the silty banks, cherry trees grew and open space stretched off to some rugged-looking mountains. I realised I had never thought of North Korea as a physical place. In my mind it had been a totalitarian-living-on-grass-dear-leader sort of hell. But across the river was a healthy-looking reed bed, some storks, a small settlement upriver whose buildings were on a more human scale than their ferocious Chinese counterparts. Up above, a skein of geese honked over the border which had few signs of being a border at all.

I walked downriver, my eye never quite pulling away from North Korean territory: a closed country; a place we’re not meant to actually see.

The first indication that this was a border was a pontoon on the water. Next to this was an unstaffed office about the size of a shipping container and made of glass. It was surrounded by a low metal fence and razor wire. A large sign with cartoon images showed us what not to do: not to barter, not to smuggle, not to make evil-looking facial expressions and not to take selfies while North Korean soldiers were goose-stepping in the background.   

Further along was the centrepiece of the riverfront: one and a half bridges, reaching out across the river. Around the bridges, vendors stood behind trestle tables. Korean money, stamps, badges of Mao and Kim Il Sung, toy guns, flags of both nations and pairs of binoculars were all for sale. These wares were an appeal to the two main sets of visitors to Dandong: foreigners like myself come to peer at the Hermit Kingdom and Chinese visitors, who view Dandong as an important place for its role in the Korean War of 1950-53.

There were earnest ladies wrapped up against the cold; only their eyes and red noses were visible, everything else hidden beneath layers of wool. One thrust a laminated itinerary at me and pointed down to an empty boat, lowering a scarf to speak in great plumes of steam. The boat, which would depart when full, would take a slow cruise out to the international line, drift parallel to the far shore and then cruise past non-political aspects of the Yalu: an island where storks nest, a close-up of the bridges’ girders which had some unique features.  

Both bridges were built by Japan when they administered this region of China and Korea. The bridge which still reaches all the way across is a railway and a single-lane road, used for transport and trade, and a key link in the railway between Pyongyang and Beijing. Until the opening of a newly-built road bridge downriver, the single lane handled around two thirds of trade between Korea and China.

The other bridge, just a few metres downriver, only reaches half-way across. It was bombed by the US-led forces in the war and had been turned into a 30-yuan ($4) tourist attraction. I paid my entry and climbed the iron steps. On the way up there were statues of farmers and soldiers, their shirt sleeves rolled up revealing beefy arms, waving flags and pointing towards Korea.

On the bridge, the iron grille flooring revealed the broiling waters of the Yalu below. The wind was biting. I strode out towards the bridge’s end with several Chinese tour groups, North Korea getting closer. Fixed on the bridge, large screens played old film of Chinese heroics during the war: grainy footage of troop columns marching, smiling and firing machine guns. These images were spliced with modern-day interviews with aged Air Force pilots and soldiers, who had transformed from looking like communist revolutionaries to looking like middle-class Americans.

At the end was a sort of viewing platform. We were perhaps 100 metres from the Korean shore. Everything was clear: there was an abandoned fairground – a decrepit rollercoaster and log flume, a ghostly ferris wheel – a bus station, a promenade, several high-rise buildings. This was the North Korean city of Sinuiju, whose most notable landmark was a large circular, apricot-coloured building with black slitty windows. It had large Korean characters which said something about unity. Such architectural futurism quickly ages and despite being eye-catching the circular structure looked as fusty as the old fairground. I would read later it was designed to block out the Chinese light: behind it are large Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung statues whose gravitas was being disturbed by the blaring vision of Dandong in the background.

Close to the shore, there is some Korean activity. Several figures walk about. They are silhouettes; their features too distant to make out. Two walk together and a lone man walks with hands in trouser pockets. The lone figure stops – it is too far to tell whether he looks out on the river or has his back to it. I raise my hand and wave, an act which feels mildly seditious, hoping my greeting will be returned. The figure stands for some time contemplating something, bringing his hands onto his hips. I wonder how he sees the honking born-again capitalists across the river, whether he is a party cadre or a solider, whether he is happy. He drops both arms and resumes his walk.

It started to feel lurid peering in, as if at a zoo, the Yalu the protective window allowing us to see but not touch. I returned to the promenade, looking across and into the most built-up area of Sinuiju. From a distance it had looked reasonably developed; not up-to-the-hilt in the Chinese style, but a moderate looking place. Now as I stopped and zoomed in on my phone camera I saw the taller buildings had no windows. Many others were incomplete. It was possible to see right through some buildings, to the jagged peaks in the distance. I lowered my phone. On the muddy Korean shore were old working boats: grim barges and dredgers, long abandoned.

North Korea was fulfilling stereotypes of itself. Dandong is not some outpost; it appears in the guidebooks. The city offers the most visible portal into North Korea. Why not tear down the old Soviet-style amusement park, fit some windows, tidy up the shoreline, at pretty much the only place the world looks in?

I stepped into an empty riverside noodle bar to wonder at the strangeness of North Korea. The proprietor brought me a pot of green tea which I wrapped my frozen hands around. He spoke in a halting, accented Mandarin, but nodded vigorously when I asked if he was Chinese. The border crossing is fairly simple for many Chinese and Koreans, sometimes legally sometimes not. He brought me the Korean dish of cold noodles with egg and kimchi.  As I wound my noodles around my chopsticks, he went outside to smoke a thin cigarette and look at his phone. Beyond him, across the still-busy boulevard, was the apricot orange round building and the rest of Sinuiju standing in ambiguous silence.

‘Bu hao! Mei you qian!’ the taxi driver said, swerving amongst the busy Dandong traffic. ‘Not good! No money!’ He was telling me about his visit to North Korea, stopping every few hundred metres trying to pick up more fares. He kept stabbing at his phone screen which showed prices of something – stocks or gambling odds. When we were stopped in a traffic jam I raised the subject of the Dandong strawberry, known all over the region. I mentioned how expensive they were in Shenyang, the city I was working in, implying a trading opportunity. But he was uninterested and accelerated away from the traffic and up the steep hill, dropping me at the base of the war museum.

The museum was like a citadel, sitting high above Dandong. Ranks of old military hardware stood outside: rusting tanks, planes and anti-aircraft guns. A freshly-painted black steam engine had, the English information board said, ‘volunteered itself’ during the Korean War and as a result been awarded the accolade of being a ‘Model Locomotive’.  

I joined a stream of people walking up a long sloping zig-zag to the entrance, passing more triumphant statues and monuments. At the main entrance a girl wearing a sash stood outside and was filing people in. She had a dazed, almost comatose, expression. When she saw me approach her eyes widened and she rushed inside. She returned accompanied by a man wearing a different colour sash, who pointed me towards a Police Office.

The name of the museum, which sounds less clunky in Chinese, is ‘The Museum to Commemorate US Aggression and China’s Aid of Korea’ and sets the leitmotif of the place. Being foreign, I had to obtain some supplementary ticket. A policeman, who I’d disturbed from a chair and blanket, slapped a ledger on the counter with a sigh and asked me to fill out my details, peering at what I’d written under ‘Nationality’.

Inside the museum I felt self-conscious. Each exhibit displayed evidence that during the war the USA was acting illegally, unilaterally – and cruelly. They were being a bully, intending to push all the way to, and possibly beyond, the Yalu River. China’s push back was therefore in defence.

It was a simple museum, full of bravado. Large rooms were filled with flashing lights, dioramas of muddy soldiers, loudspeakers booming out sounds of bombs, machine gun fire, shouts of soldiers. There were mannequins of wounded but determined Chinese and devilish-looking Americans. There were general depictions of action rather than specific references to events.

The American version of the War is just as biased. Essentially, each side says the other started it, and each says the other lost. It was a strange conflict, a proxy war between the USSR and China-backed North and the USA-backed South. State communism versus market capitalism. By the end of three years of fighting, there was no gain for either side, it ended how it started – but with over a million deaths and a stalemate truce, etched out in the 2-mile Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which runs the length of the border between North and South Korea.

Many exhibits had been hurriedly set up: posters bulged with air pockets and large rooms felt empty. The exhibits were building to a crescendo, more American brutality and more Chinese pluckiness. As the only visibly non-Chinese visitor, I thought someone might biff me. A breed of younger Chinese male gets puffed up on this sort of patriotism; buying into simple narratives: a video game world where they shoot guns, play basketball and drink Coca Cola.

The inevitable conclusion towards the exit was that the Chinese had won, symbolised in the largest diorama of all, Mao and Kim Il Sung, smiling and shaking hands, an adoring multitude surrounding them.

Back outside the winter afternoon was beginning to darken. With an hour before my train back to the Chinese heartlands I jogged back down the hill then up another towards Jinjiang Pagoda, which had views across the river. I cut through a wood on a trail, coming across an open area with several older people using catapults to shoot something in the trees. They stopped when they saw me and asked the usual questions. Why are you alone? Which country? What’s your salary?

The pagoda was at the summit of a large park. When I arrived it was locked. From its base I could see only tree trunks, but the lack of foliage allowed glimpses down to the cities below.

Dandong was now an orb of bright flashing light. This abruptly ended at the Yalu, a darker body. On the Korean side were some dim paraffin glows and the neon sign on the circular building which was now lit. I looked up on my phone what it meant: One Heart United or Single-hearted Unity. Apart from this, the Korean land was in darkness.

I lingered – imagining this might be the last time I’d see North Korea – before scampering back down the hill to the train station, passing a monkey and bear enclosure (the monkeys were in residence, the bears were not) back under Mao and into the station. It was thronged. A cold Sunday night, people heading back to the city for work or study. The floor was wet and everyone was wrapped up in thick coats. There was a stampede when the platform opened. Soon we were accelerating away from Dandong in the high-speed train, into the freezing night, away from the Yalu River, whose silent banks already felt far away.