Word: sinuiju
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...Hyok knows big changes are coming to this backward North Korean city situated on the banks of the Yalu River across from China. He has heard that Kim Jong Il, North Korea's enigmatic dictator, intends to turn Sinuiju into a special economic zone. Li and the 4,000 other employees of Sinuiju Shoe Factory are hopeful that the promised boost in commercial activity will improve their meager lot. "This is all for the Korean people," Li says, standing among middle-aged women piecing together black and white sneakers on noisy sewing machines. "It makes the Korean people richer, with...
...exact details of how the new zone will be established, Li says, "I am not clear." And in this case, the devil is definitely in the detail. The government plans to deport Li, his factory, and the 500,000 residents of Sinuiju to other parts of the communist country to make way for a capitalist paradise as ambitious as it is bizarre. Li and his neighbors will be replaced by 200,000 model workers, hand-picked for their technical skills, who will populate a city encircled by a yet-to-be-built wall erected to keep illegal migrants out. Within...
...Jong Il, the Dear Leader, is of course more experienced at emulating Stalin's gulags than Adam Smith's capitalism. Yet Kim Yong Sul, North Korea's vice-minister for foreign trade, called the Sinuiju Special Administrative Region "a new historical miracle" wrought by Kim Jong Il "in the hope of achieving prosperity for Korea." Not so long ago, U.S. President George W. Bush branded North Korea a member of the "Axis of Evil," along with Iraq and Iran. But the xenophobic Kim now seems increasingly frantic to mend relations with the outside world and leapfrog his poverty-stricken people...
...Sinuiju gambit, however, is aimed at one of the country's few allies: China. The tightly controlled border crossing at Sinuiju will be thrown open to Chinese labor and business?which Yang's appointment is meant to entice. China offers not just investment capital. The country and its rising class of entrepreneurs can conceivably teach North Korea how to turn a crumbling communist state into an economic dynamo. After all, Beijing two decades ago launched free-trade zones to lure foreign investment as a prelude to transforming the whole country into a market economy...
...bypass the railway check point at Sinuiju, on the Manchurian border, the Communists built a new spur line two miles away, over which illegal arms roll unhindered from Manchuria. At the Manpo check point on the Yalu, neutral inspectors see nothing but empty freight cars returning to Manchuria-while loaded trains cross into North Korea over a nearby bridge barred to the truce teams...