North Korea spent the pandemic building a huge border wall

SEOUL - For North Koreans, the country’s northern frontier long offered rare access to outside information, trade opportunities, and the best option for those seeking to flee.

“The traditional North Korea-China route is now effectively over, unless there is a major change in the situation,” said Mr Kim, a South Korean pastor who has helped North Koreans defect. He and others who conduct sensitive work on the border spoke on the condition of partial or full anonymity, citing concerns for their safety and a desire to protect their networks.

Those towns “benefited from formal and informal trade since the famine in the 1990s, but really don’t have many other economic advantages,” he said. “So the crackdowns are hitting two vulnerable groups, women and the population of the geographic periphery.”Reuters and Middlebury examined Google Earth Pro satellite imagery of North Korea’s northern frontier, taken at various stages between 2019 and early 2023.

Defectors, human rights activists and sources in China involved in smuggling goods or people across the border said the new security features were choking economic lifelines for vulnerable people, closing paths of escape from the authoritarian country, and further limiting North Koreans’ access to outside information.

North Korea has also ordered border guards to shoot anyone trying to cross, according to official notices issued by Chinese authorities in 2020 that warned residents of the risks. Kim, the pastor, and human rights organisations have said the orders to shoot remain in effect. Tightening control of international trade, both official and unofficial, is a way for Pyongyang to exert influence over the military and other party members far from the border who might otherwise build power bases and pose a threat to the leadership, said Mr J.R. Kim, a former South Korean government official who is now vice-president at the Council on Diplomacy for Korean Unification in Seoul.

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