Was North Korean leader Kim Jong-un so inspired by his meetings with President Trump in 2018 and 2019 that he adopted one of the former president’s flagship policies?
Given the opacity surrounding North Korea’s state decision-making, that is impossible to say. What can be said with certainty is that a wall is rising along much of Mr. Kim’s 840 mile-border with his supposedly most critical ally — China.reported over the weekend on the latest developments along North Korea’s northern border, which separates the deeply isolated state from China and, for a 10-mile strip in the northeast, the Russian Far East.
Since 2020, “Pyongyang has built hundreds of kilometers of new or upgraded border fences, walls and guard posts,” according to Reuters.While the numbers of cases and deaths remains a closely guarded state secret, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a boon for Pyongyang in some respects, said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea watcher at Seoul’s Kookmin University.
For decades, North Korea’s southern border — the famed DMZ, complete with minefields, barbed and razor wire, detection sensors, searchlights and patrols, and hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops standing guard — was tremendously risky to cross. The lucky ones can, that is. Those less fortunate — no credible data on their numbers exists — may become trapped in human trafficking nets inside China, leading, in some cases, to nightmare lives of rural slave labor, sexual slavery and forced marriage.Since Mr. Kim took office following the death of his father in 2011, he has been steadily upgrading security along the northern border.
“Unlike his father, who did not care much about knowledge of the outside world, he understands that he has to keep people as isolated as possible and is willing to invest,” said Mr. Lankov.
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