Uneasy Neighbors.(China and North Korea)

Within the last two weeks a large number of Chinese soldiers have poured into the remote northeastern frontier bordering North Korea. Troops are preparing for another grim winter, when the Tumen River freezes and desperate North Korean refugees dodge Chinese patrols to escape into China. In the late '90s, fleeing North Koreans won local sympathy with their heart-rending tales of repression, famine, even cannibalism. But Beijing cracked down on the influx in 2001, and this year China has beefed up border security to what one local professor calls "an unusual, abnormal degree." Over the next month, NEWSWEEK has learned, troops will move into five newly constructed barracks in key frontier towns, replacing smaller border-police units. Their mission: to repel the expected waves of refugees this winter--and to quash escalating violence involving North Koreans on the Chinese side of the border.

Chinese authorities are losing patience with their northeastern neighbor. For decades Beijing tolerated Pyongyang's erratic behavior, and even pooh-poohed Western warnings about a covert nuclear program. But last October, North Korean authorities themselves admitted to secretly developing nukes. That was an unpleasant wake-up call for Beijing. Last week's six-party talks meant to defuse the nuclear crisis were the culmination of an unprecedented flurry of diplomacy on China's part. But North Korean authorities continue to live up to their reputation as being qiong heng--"impoverished and truculent," as the Chinese put it. During the talks, China's representative was reportedly irked when the North Koreans announced they intended to formally declare their country a nuclear power--and to conduct a nuclear test (accompanying story).

Chinese authorities now view their traditional ally as a growing liability. Even as the Pyongyang regime tries to blackmail the West in return for economic benefit, it continues to rely on imported food aid and fuel from China. (Holding his head in his hands, one exasperated Beijing official lamented to an American acquaintance, "Even the Laotians can feed themselves!") Already more than 150,000 North Korean refugees are hiding out in China, and official numbers put the annual refugee influx at about 10,000. "Actually, the real number is more like 20,000," says Huang Dahui, an expert on North Korea at the People's University in Beijing, "and if there's a new conflict on the Korean Peninsula, a lot more refugees will come."

The refugees are having an increasingly destabilizing effect on the Chinese frontier. About two years ago North Korean refugees began robbing--even killing--more affluent Chinese citizens, many of them ethnic Koreans. "We used to take pity on refugees; we gave them food, money and shelter," says an ethnic Korean woman living on the Chinese side, "but now there's so much violence. And we poor people are the victims. We hate the refugees now."

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