Some 70 trucks full of cargo make a beeline across the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge in front of the customs office in the Chinese border city of Dandong. They are headed for the North Korean city of Sinuiju across the Yalu River.
About 30 North Koreans are waiting to clear customs. Holding a basket of tropical fruit, a North Korean woman says she is on her way home after visiting relatives in Dandong and the fruit are a gift from them. Customs procedures seem as cursory as they were before North Korea's nuclear test last October. Immediately after the test, Chinese officials carefully searched all luggage. But now, an ethnic Korean in China who trades in machinery, says traders are no longer so jittery. "Spring is back. I think this is a business season," he says. Right after the nuclear test was a time to go into hibernation, he adds.
Chinese tourists have started returning to North Korea, six months after tours came to a halt. Dandong China International Travel Service signed a contract with North Korea early this month to sell eight products, including day tours to Sinuiju and weeklong trips touring Pyongyang, Kaesong, Nampo and Mt. Kumgang.
In Sinuiju, a separate passenger terminal is under construction to accommodate increasing tourism. A Dondaong-based businessman who invested in the project says, "After the North Korean government pledged to focus on economic development early this year, North Korean officials have become more aggressive in attracting tourists. Chinese people are admitted to a nearby tourist park without passports." Returning from a visit to Pyongyang and Sinuiju, he added that banners encouraging economic development have replaced nuclear-related slogans in the cities.
According to sources acquainted with North Korean affairs, North Korea recently designated some parts of Pyongyang and Sinuiju and a nearby area of Mt. Myohyang as economic or tourist development zones and is drawing up a bill on investors' use of land.
A source in Shenyang in China's Liaoning Province said the bill, like a similar Chinese law, will give foreign investors tax benefits and a 50-year right to use land. These are part of an economic development and reconstruction project, North Korea's main policy goal for this year, he added. A source in Beijing said North Korea plans to develop economic regions modeled after an economic zone in Rajin-Sonbong and the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex. The North will make the plans public after watching how the six-nation nuclear talks develop, he added.
