The bridge is near the small northern Chinese city of Yanji, a mere 60 miles or so from where North Korea announced that it had tested a nuclear weapon last Monday. It’s a tense place right now. Nobody here suggested that they’d felt any tremors from an underground explosion, but the Chinese living around the border area are confused and wary of their mercurial neighbors. “Everybody’s talking about this, and they’re not happy,” Zhao Lihua, a convenience-store owner in downtown Yanji, told NEWSWEEK. “The North Koreans are so poor and backward. They’re nothing, and yet they’re threatening the whole world.”
Around Yanji, the anxiety is especially palpable in the outlying villages at the foot of the mountains leading into North Korea. Officials there have ordered residents not to talk about the test explosion to outsiders. When I tried to approach some villagers in one small town, two men—one reeking of alcohol—got into my taxi, questioned me and started to dial the local public-security bureau. Fully aware that many of my colleagues and their interviewees have been detained or even assaulted by thugs claiming to represent the police, I insisted that they leave the vehicle and told the driver to head back to the city.
The tension is hardly confined to the border, of course. Many governments fear that North Korea could be on the verge of another test— especially as the first may have been less successful than planned. And earlier today, the country threatened Tokyo with “strong countermeasures” should it impose fresh sanctions, reported the Kyodo news agency. Japan, which argues that North Korea’s nuclear capacity is a strong threat to Japan’s safety, is expected to announce new sanctions tomorrow. The measures could include barring North Korean imports and blocking North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports.
Already China has ordered border troops not to take any leave, and there are signs that local communities are furiously building fences to keep out a likely increase of refugees fleeing the impact of sanctions. One South Korean professor who teaches at a local Chinese university—and who didn’t want to be named for fear of offending his hosts—said that he saw a new border fence when he took a trip down the river just 10 days ago.
Meanwhile, back at the Friendship Bridge, my Chinese escorts were willing to indulge my interest in entering North Korea. They allowed me to step over the white line to look at the Chinese tourists from the other side of the binoculars. Then they told me it was time to go—and my 30-second visit to forbidden territory was over.
