Bridges of Dandong county
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By Andrei Lankov
Bridges connect countries ― few people would argue with this remark. If a country needs connections with the outside world, it builds a bridge, and if it wants to be left alone, it sees a bridge as a threat. There are few places in the world where this can be seen more clearly than on the banks of the Lower Yalu River, where the North Korean city of Sinuiju and Chinese city of Dandong face one another.
For over a century the link between Dandong and Sinuiju has remained the major connection between North Korea and China.
The cities acquired such a role in 1905 when the Japanese completed the trans-Korean railway line that connected Busan, Seoul and Sinuiju. It was destined to become the major transportation axis of the entire peninsula.
Predictably, the new railway was soon connected to the fast expanding railway network of northeast China. The first bridge was completed in 1911. By the standards of the time, it was a big engineering project, since the Yalu River is some 900 meters wide there.
Soon afterward, the Yalu and Tuman ― two rivers that divide Korea and China ― were crossed with dozens of bridges. Korea was a Japanese colony, and in 1931 the Japanese established a puppet government in Manchuria that also became a colony in everything but name. Trade and migration were encouraged by the Japanese authorities and paperwork kept at a minimum, so dozens of bridges were built by 1945 to facilitate the exchanges. In 1943, another bridge was built in Dandong, next to the 1911 bridge that could not handle the fast-growing traffic.
The year 1945 brought many changes. Korea regained independence while Manchuria was reintegrated into China. For a brief while, life along the border did not change much, but as both newly independent states were strengthening, the people in the borderland discovered that the old-style exchanges and free movement began to require more and more paperwork.
And then the war came. The Yalu bridges were the major target of United States Air Force raids since they were used to supply the Chinese and North Korean forces. To avoid political complications (China was officially not at war), the Americans had to do precision bombing, so they did what they could to hit only those parts of the bridges that were close to the Korean bank.
The twin bridges of Sinuiju were destroyed by U.S. bombers in late 1950, soon followed by other bridges on the Yalu. However, when the war was over, only a few bridges were repaired. Despite the friendship rhetoric, migration between China and North Korea was now regulated and increasingly discouraged, and the traffic in goods also declined since under the new system only governments had rights to trade.
Thus, if one goes across the Yalu River, one would encounter several old bridges that were damaged during the Korean War, but were not repaired.
Even in Sinuiju, one bridge would be sufficient under post-1953 conditions. Thus, the 1943 bridge was repaired; while the severely damaged 1911 bridge was much later re-developed as an open air museum, complete with a large monument to the Chinese soldiers who fought in Korea in 1950-53.
Meanwhile, the 1943 bridge, now officially bearing the flowery title of “Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge,” continues to handle railway and motor vehicle traffic. It has only one lane, so it has to follow a strict schedule: for a few hours it is used by trucks (there are very few cars) moving to North Korea, and then it switches to traffic in the opposite direction. From time to time it closes to motor vehicle traffic so that infrequent trains can pass.
This is not a very convenient system, but the narrow and aging bridge nonetheless handles some 60-70 percent of North Korea’s entire inbound traffic. When it needs repair (like now), it becomes a big political issue, since, for the North Koreans, closing the bridge means that their country is completely cut off from the outside world.
In the early 2010s, construction of a massive new bridge began nearby, but, in spite of being nearly completed, it remains closed to traffic. However, the sad story of this white elephant would warrant another article that I hope to contribute soon. At any rate, North Korea is now less well served with cross-border bridges than was the case 75 years ago, and this fact alone speaks volumes about this country’s peculiar attitude to the outside world.
Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.