Despite much speculation this year that Beijing has been toughening its policies on North Korea, China has in fact been developing nascent economic ties with its impoverished neighbor – a case of the region’s largest and most dynamic economy investing in the most backward.
On an academic exchange in September, Flinders University PhD candidate Robert Potter saw first hand some of the evidence of joint development, and was part of the only academic exchange group to be permitted to visit a trade show at the special economic zone in Rason, about 50 km inside North Korea’s border with China.