CHEMICAL WEAPONS PRODUCTION
Warm weather encourages Chinese locals to picnic while they relax on the Yalu River border of North Korea and China. All looks serene at this particularly scenic stretch of the river. However, the smokestacks on the opposite North Korean riverbank serve a sinister purpose.
Fleets of small ferries and speedboats offer the opportunity to enjoy the crystal-clear waters, the fresh river air and a close-up glimpse of the North Korean town of Chongsu on the eastern shoreline.
A decree of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly has assigned more than 3,800 hectares of this section of Sakchu County for development as a tourist zone. Pyongyang hopes to encourage Chinese to venture across the river for half-day or one-day tours which would include visits to a Korean folk village. Other attractions would be the Chongsu and Youlgol revolutionary sites associated with the revolutionary fighter Kim Hyong Jik.
Despite the announcement establishing the tourism zone many years ago, the curious Chinese limit their sightseeing to cruising on boats. They don’t step onto the North Korean shore, and there appears to be little if any, development of the proposed North Korean cultural and recreation area.
A dominating feature across the river, in the township of Chongsu, is a series of smokestacks rising from a light industrial area built adjacent to the eastern riverbank.
This facility is the infamous Chongsu Chemical Complex. It has long been believed to produce chemical weapons. More recently, the complex is also suspected of producing nuclear-grade graphite.
Nerve, Choking & Blister Agents
The Chongsu Chemical Complex is designated a possible chemical weapons plant by organizations including the International Crisis Group and the Centre for Strategic & International Studies.
Pyongyang openly declares itself to be a nuclear missile power, but it denies possessing chemical or biological weapons and agents. However, it suspected that North Korea does in-fact possess a large stockpile of chemical weapons, and maintaining an active biological weapons program.
U.S. Department of Defense assessments state that North Korea maintains munitions stockpiles of several types of chemical agents, including nerve, choking, blister, and blood. They estimate that North Korea can develop, produce, and weaponize many biological warfare agents. These agents include bacterial spores causing anthrax and smallpox, as well as the bacteria producing plague and cholera.
Mid 2018 saw reports emerged of North Korea possibly proliferating controlled nuclear goods from the Chongsu industrial and laboratory complex.
David Albright, a former United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear inspector has documented changes made to the Chongsu buildings and facilities between 2014 and 2016. These changes are suspected to now enable the production of nuclear-grade graphite.
Nuclear-grade, high purity graphite, is internationally controlled because it is a component used in nuclear reactors.
CBS News reported in June 2018 that the Chongsu facility was on the list of sites that U.S. intelligence recommends that international inspectors access to verify the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Bombed Hekou Bridge
Just a kilometer downstream from Chongsu is the Hekou Bridge (formally known as Qingcheng Bridge and Pier). Built by the Japanese occupying army in 1941, it was the first road bridge to cross the Yalu River. The bridge was constructed to support Japanese troop movements in Manchuria, and it facilitated their economic plunder of the region.
United States aircraft repeatedly bombed the Hekou Bridge during the Korean War. The bombing raids were part of an aggressive campaign to sever all bridges across the Yalu River that connected China and North Korea. The objective was to prevent Chinese communist troops and their supplies reaching the North Korean fighting frontline, as well as being a part of their broader strategic bombing campaign on North Korea. After more than 30 sorties, the Hekou Bridge was severed on March 29, 1951.
Today, in Changdian village, the Chinese side of the bridge is a popular attraction for local tourists who are curious to peer across to their Korean neighbors in Chongsu. Apart from a Korean People’s Army border watchtower built at the Chongsu end of the bridge, the Koreans have left the area primarily abandoned and undeveloped.
Life on the Amnok (Yalu) River
The Amnok River (China names the river the Yalu) separates China and North Korea.
Gazing across the river gives North Korean’s a glimpse of life in developed China. Chinese looking from their shore over to North Korea can see present-day reminders of how they too once lived in decades past before the modernization of their country.
The North Korean terraced hills are hand seeded and plowed by oxen. Aquaculture is a vital industry on the Amnok, and fish farms line both the Korean and Chinese riverbanks.
North Korean women can be seen scrubbing clothes in the river while their children scamper over stones. Occasionally, a North Korean soldier may wave to the Chinese boats cruising the river, and meanwhile, villagers ride the unsealed river-bank roads on bicycles and motorcycles.
People from both countries swim in the shared river, but they never climb the banks of the foreign shore. In contrast, waterfowl ignore the border, with a Chinese adage stating “Ducks go to Korea to eat fish and return to China to lay their eggs."
With North Korea being a closed country, it is easy to overlook the tides of migration that have ebbed and flowed between China and Korea for millennia. The failure of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” in the 1960s, the economic crisis that followed, and then again during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Chinese swam across the Amnok to escape to North Korea. In the 1990s, the migration was in the opposite direction.
There are 15 official crossing points on the North Korean and Chinese frontier. Movements between the two countries are supposedly tightly controlled, but with the border being 1,400 km long, opportunities for un-official crossings are clear to see.
North Korean guard posts and towers are placed every few hundred meters on the shoreline of populated areas of the Amnok. Their guards don’t appear to interfere or restrict North Koreans using the river for washing, swimming or river agriculture.
Despite this appearance of passivity, both Chinese locals and North Korean defectors say the North Korean secret services - the Bowibu - keep an eye on people’s comings and goings from the towers. In many sections of the river North Korean barbed-wire border fences are visible; however, these are less imposing than the tall razor wire fences that often secure the Chinese side of the river.
Breeding livestock is a staple industry for communities living along the Sakchu County segment of the Amnok. As well as being an important pork production center, the terraced fields enable the growing of rice, soybeans, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, and stone fruit.
North Korea designated this region as the Chongsu Tourist Development Zone in 2014. Pyongyang declared that “This area will develop into a tourist zone equipped with modern tourism and service facilities while also highlighting the distinct characteristics of Korean folklore.”
Kwak Jin Ho, the director of the Development Zone, announced “The zone’s infrastructure, public facilities, and tourist service facilities will all be built to meet modern standards. Currently, there are plans to construct factories for special product manufacturing, as well as areas for livestock, orchards, and fisheries. With these targets, there are also plans for a cultural recreation district, Korean folk village, general services area, Korean folk hotel, as well as processing plants for spring water, fruits, wild greens, and kimchi."
With the enforcement of international sanctions and changes in Pyongyang/Beijing relations following the execution of Jang Song Thaek, little, if any progress on the development of the tourist zone has progressed since the 2014 announcement. This area of North Korea continues to be infrequently visited by outsiders.
Gazing at Impoverished Neighbors
North of the booming Chinese border city of Dandong, a daily routine plays out that emphasizes the vast gap between Asia's two socialist allies.
Throughout the day, dozens of Chinese ferries and speedboats set off from jetties on the Yalu River. Chinese tourists keep their cameras and selfie sticks at the ready as they approach the most secretive society on earth.
As they stare at their neighbors, tour guides explain that North Korea isn't as economically advanced as China. The Chinese tourists remark among themselves that the North Korean’s are quite backward, and are not living in ideal conditions.
A tour guide in Changdian explained the fascination that draws the constant flow of Chinese passengers to his ferry. “Chinese tourists come to satisfy their curiosity. They want to see how poor North Koreans are.”
The guide adds; “When we look at these North Koreans we feel a sense of superiority. I feel sorry for them. I’ve seen how poor those people are under that political system. Most of all they lack freedom, and they eat bad food. North Koreans can’t even feed themselves properly.”
