China's cross-border trade with N. Korea continues despite report of punitive restrictions

Cross-border trade in China's northeast region bordering North Korea went on as usual Saturday amid lingering tension abroad over the North's missile launches this week, ethnic Koreans said.

A Japanese daily reported the same day that China appeared to begin restricting trade with North Korea as a punitive action against the North's missile firings on Wednesday.

"We don't feel much that there is a particular change here after the missile launches," an ethnic Korean living in the border city of Dandong said, requesting anonymity. "Even yesterday, I saw trucks and cars come and go across the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge," he said, referring to the bridge over the Amnok River, also called Yalu in Chinese, which defines the territory of the two sides.

Dandong serves as the main trade gate between the two ideological allies, and is bustling with logistics trucks that transport industrial goods to the North's Sinuiju from Monday through Friday.

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun said in a dispatch from Dandong earlier in the day that cargo trucks traveling there via the river bridge have virtually vanished. The report suggested China has frozen trade with the North as a punitive action over its missile launches.

Korean-Chinese businesspeople and North Korean workers, however, denied that China imposed sanctions on the North and said the seemingly reduced trade was a seasonal factor.

"Usually in summer there's less trade. If the trading goods and personnel have reduced over the bridge, it's more likely from the seasonal influence. It is a far-fetched idea if they think it was that China began controlling the trade after the missile launches," an ethnic Korean businessman said, also asking not to be named.

"We cannot even think of the Chinese government blocking private-level trade with Pyongyang. And I've not even heard that China was controlling the transportation of goods going into North Korea," another businessman said.

But a resident in Shenyang said that the Chinese customs authorities were strengthening checks on trade goods that could be used to make military arms in North Korea. His comment could not be immediately verified.

Shenyang, China, July 8 (Yonhap News)