Staring At North Korea From Dandong

A Brief Introduction

I wrote this years ago as part of a narrative about my trip to Liaoning Province in 2007. I’ve not been able to write a satisfactory account of the middle part of the trip (and remain unsatisfied with what I wrote about its beginning), but have felt motivated to finish writing about the final leg of the journey, which took us to Dandong and China’s border with North Korea.

I mention this because some of the characters below (Know It All, Mr Binoculars, the idiot tour guide) would have been – and, perhaps, will be – described and fleshed out in this episode’s prequels. For this reason they aren’t developed below, though such development probably isn’t necessary.

Also, keep in mind that these events took place in 2007. Prices have doubtlessly risen, and Dandong has doubtlessly developed.

Enjoy.

How DPRK Gulags Became Dandong’s Main Tourist Attraction

Dandong (丹东) is a sleepy town that is able to draw a disproportionate number tourists because the North Korean city Sinuiju (신의주) is directly across the Yalu River. At Dandong the river is maybe 100 m wide, so from the riverwalk you can take as long a look at North Korea as you wish. Hawkers meet gawkers to rent binoculars and telescopes with which to give the North a good visual scrubbing. From the docks you can pay to go on a seven minute tour boat ride that takes you within mere yards of the North Korean shore; all the better to rubberneck at you, my dear.

Tourists and journalists find Dandong/Sinuiju appealing because the visual contrast is so striking. Dandong’s riverbank is towers and hotels and neon and KTV’s. Sinuiju’s bank is mud, dirty trees and worn buildings. I assumed the Chinese would look at the DPRK and think something like  “there, but for the grace of God…”, but none of the Chinese I asked reported thinking anything of the sort.

Sinuiju is the principal gateway for Sino-Korean trade, is home to a nasty prison camp, and is one of the North Korean regions chosen to experiment with running a market economy. The view of it from Google Maps is depressing.

The Boat to North Korea

Our boat pulls away from the dock and goes one kilometer upriver to the “Broken Bridge” (which US planes bombed during the Korean War to sever a Sino-Korean rail line) before veering to starboard to run parallel to the DPRK’s shoreline.
We’re now in North Korean waters.

At this point everyone on our boat runs to the port side of the vessel to be as close to North Korea as possible. The shift in weight is such that we begin to keel to port, and I worry that we will capsize. The headline – “300 Dead In Chinese Tour Boat Disaster” might make the bottom of page A18, and since Americans will drown the late night comics will take notice and make Chinese Fire Drill jokes. What an ignominious death.

The first thing you see in North Korea is an empty ferris wheel. Foreigners who write about Dandog like to bring up this ferris wheel so they have the opportunity to describe North Korea as eerie and/or foreboding.
I don’t know why. The ferris wheel looks similar in make and model to the ferris wheel in the park by my apartment in Changchun. The baskets are wooden and narrow with a steep roof and look like those A-frame houses you see around ski resorts. They’re painted red, blue, or green and the paint is peeling in places. They’re all empty and sway a little in the breeze. They’re only creepy insofar as anything manmade and in disuse represents a failure to appreciate a miraculous act of human ingenuity.

A large group of people (North Koreans, presumably) are listening to a lecture under the trees on the Korean riverfront. I don’t imagine they will go on the ferris wheel after the talk. Most of the people on our boat take pictures of the group.
We motor a little farther down the river and run parallel to a row of watercraft: two fishing boats, a day cruiser, a North Korean naval vessel, and a final wood fishing boat docked in front of cranes and factory buildings.

Real live North Koreans in bright uniforms are standing on the cruiser and the naval ship. On the cruiser is a group of men in their 50’s and wearing officers’ uniforms that are blue and nicely laundered though slightly big in the shoulders and arms. They are smoking, leaning on the cruiser’s rails, and chatting while looking at the tour groups.

There are two or three young guys on the navy cutter, dressed in humiliating striped sailor suits with Donald Duck caps. They’re built somewhere between scrawny and emaciated, puffed up at attention to project an air of malice.

The real show stopper are the women on the cutter. They’re dressed in nautical white uniforms with thick horizontal blue stripes at the bodice and puffy sleeves, and each wears a large white hat that’s shaped like a painter’s palette. They style their hair sort of large in front and then pulled back into a thick ponytail supported by hairnet. It’s exactly the hairstyle that you see on all the women on North Korean stamps. The bright red lipstick, rouge and eyeliner are clearly visible, even at a distance.
The overall effect initially seems sort of 50’s retro and charming and just maybe weird enough to fit nicely into what we’ve been taught to think about North Korea. Then you realize that from the eyebrows down they look like every other person in the world who studied Tourism & Recreation Management at university. Cold eyes hang over that fixed smile that guides learn to use as a defensive, offensive, or neutral tool for submission.
I doubt they ever get to lean or chat or smoke when they’re on deck, and they probably wouldn’t want to. These ladies are professionals. The young guys are rigid at attention next to them, but it seems highly unlikely that the women might ever need outside help defending themselves.

The other tourists on our Chinese boat start taking pictures of the Koreans on the Korean boats.

There’s nothing weird or robotic or menacing about what we’re seeing. The Koreans are here because we come over on these damn rickety boats to look at them.

Our boat loops to starboard again and we’re back at the dock.

A Challenge

The incompetent tour guide comes over to the four of us and says he’s been on a speedboat ride that was awesome. The pilot of the speedboat will take us on the same ride for just ¥250, each. It’s such a preposterous price that we decide to see how cheaply we can find the same ride on our own, and wind up paying ¥15 each for a seat on a speedboat.

Our pilot takes us further upriver, where there are empty docks and overgrown bushes and more views of the ferris wheel, which still doesn’t look creepy.

We tear back downriver to the Korean ships and the pilot kills the engine so we can drift and enjoy the view. We look at the soldiers on the first boat and they look at us. I don’t know what else to do so I wave and smile. They smile and wave, then go back to smoking and talking. The women ignore us when we go past. Four people in a speedboat don’t merit the professional treatment–too small an audience.

We pass by a fishing boat’s open cabin doors and there’s a skinny shirtless man squatting over a washbowl and scrubbing his face. You can count his ribs, even from ten meters away, and I surprise myself by taking a picture that I know won’t turn out.

It’s been a morning of voyeurism that hasn’t sat well with me, and I wonder why I’ve started seeing North Korean people as Kodak moments.

Our engine turns over and we go back to China.

Back in China

On the walk back to the tour bus we browse vendors’ card tables of North Korean kitsch. Most of the women behind the tables speak heavily accented Mandarin to us and chat with each other in Korean. Some of our group want to barter over trinkets, but the women are much more interested in asking Am I From Canada and What Do I Do and Is My Whole Body As Hairy As My Arms? I press the flesh but keep us moving so we can find someplace to eat lunch before the bus leaves. My very real urgency is taken as a bargaining ploy and we end up with great deals on gifts for the folks at home. We get takeout from a Korean barbecue on the square and browse in a shop to buy North Korean stamps.

The idiot tour guide comes into the shop to cluck us back onto the bus, and for the only time on the trip we’re the last ones on. Mr. Binoculars is standing next to the bus door, staring through his binoculars into the lobby of the hotel we’re parked in front of.

Know It All, who’s just starting to smoke a cigarette and who until three minutes ago had been shopping for stamps with us, says, “I’ve been standing out here for twenty minutes looking for you!”
“Bullshit!” Michael’s had enough of the guy. “You were just in the same damn store as us, shopping!”
“Well, I was looking for you then, too.”
“Bullshit!”

Goodbye, Dandong

On the bus we open our lunch bags and fill the bus with the smell of garlic and kimchi and onions and beef broth. I feel bad and self-conscious about it until the family across the aisle opens one of their bags and gives their kids bottles of bubbles, light-up noisemakers, and little plastic pistols that go RAta-TAta-TAT-TAT-TAT when you pull the trigger.

I decide I don’t care if the smell of our food bothers them.

The bus gets lost leaving Dandong and we stop at a junkyard to ask directions. I hop off the bus to get rid of our garbage, leaving the bag of styrofoam dishes in an otherwise empty gutter. By the time the bus has turned around, kids have come out from the piles of garbage to open our garbage bag and are eating from it.

Epilogue

North Korea’s experiment with free markets was checked in late 2009, when the DPRK government revalued its currency and set a limit of W100,000 that could be exchanged into the new currency. To date, at least two thousand North Koreans have starved to death as a result.

Dandong continues to be American journalists’ go-to place for shallow insight into North Korea. Give it a google and see what you come up with; North Korean soldiers throwing stones is a popular motif. Peter Hessler wrote about Dandong in Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China, which I highly recommend as a more balanced look at the city.