North Korea and China Signed a Border Collaboration Agreement

The Chinese Liberation Army Newspaper (Haebang-ilbo) reported yesterday that China and North Korea signed a Border Collaboration Agreement to ensure the safety and security of the border area of 1400 kilometers that both countries share.

This newspaper said that this agreement is “a follow-up to last year’s change of armed police force to the regular army as border guards.” However, it did not disclose the detailed contents of the agreement.

There is a good possibility that this agreement may prescribe the communication channel with North Korea and the procedures to deal with illegal border crossings as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has been stationed at the North Korean-Chinese border since last September.

North Korea and China agreed on the “Extradition Convention of Chinese and North Korean Criminals” in 1960 and the “Business Convention of the Border Areas” in 1986.

However, these agreements were signed while the Chinese army was not in charge of the border area. A Hong Kong newspaper (Sungdo-ilbo) that issued the first news report regarding the Chinese Liberation Army disposition to the frontier last September, analyzed that the disposition of the regular army in the border area is “a pressure against North Korean nuclear development” and “a measure to prepare China for a possible U.S. Attack on North Korea.”

zsh75@donga.com