The inland border between North Korea and Russia runs just 17 kilometers, from Josan-ri in Rason, North Hamgyong Province, along the Tumen River to the East Sea. Spanning the Tumen between Rason and Russia's Khasansky District in Primorsky Krai is an aging railway bridge. Opened in 1952, at the height of the Korean War, as a simple wooden structure and rebuilt in steel in 1959, the Tumen River rail bridge is known as the Friendship Bridge. Since then it has served as the only overland gateway linking the two countries.
About 400 meters from that rail bridge, a new road bridge opened on the 7th of this month. Built under an agreement reached by the North Korean and Russian leaders in June 2024, the two-lane crossing is named Yakov Novichenko, after a Soviet army officer who in 1946 shielded Kim Il-sung from a grenade with his own body and remains a "hero" in North Korea and a symbol of friendship between the two states. Pyongyang and Moscow have stressed trade and economic cooperation, but a Ukrainian human rights group has raised the possibility that the bridge will become a conduit for military supplies and technology between them.
About 600 kilometers to the southwest, on the lower Amnok River at the border with China, preparations are under way to open the New Yalu River Bridge, which will supplement the Amnok River rail bridge that has connected Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province with Dandong in China's Liaoning Province for more than 80 years. The original Amnok rail bridge was a single-track line built in 1911 by imperial Japan as it sought inroads into China. As freight traffic with Manchuria grew, a double-track rail bridge was built alongside it in 1943 — today's Amnok River rail bridge, known as the China-North Korea Friendship Bridge, which carries about 70% of overland freight between the two countries. The New Yalu River Bridge is a four-lane road bridge meant to replace and supplement the aging rail crossing. Completed in 2014, it was left idle until follow-up work accelerated after Pyongyang and Beijing restored relations last year. Its opening is being discussed for around October 6, the 77th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
The two overland routes opening along the northern border, where the Amnok and Tumen rivers run, mean more than the completion of bridges. The closer North Korea moves to its neighbors, the greater the concern that Chinese and Russian influence over the Korean Peninsula will grow.
