North Korea and China finally opened the New Yalu River Bridge this month, a project originally slated to open in 2014. On Saturday, Kim Jong Un crossed it to visit China and announced the friendship is stronger than ever.
Kim crossed into the border city of Dandong on Saturday, according to South Korea's unification ministry and China's Xinhua news agency, as reported by AP and The Guardian. It's his first visit to China in a year. He met Wang Huning, a member of the standing committee of China's Communist Party, and the two toured a car factory.
I've covered a lot of summits. This is the first one where the main accomplishment was using the road.
Some history. The bridge runs about 3 kilometers, four lanes, from Dandong to Sinuiju in North Korea, per the BBC. The opening was postponed indefinitely after North Korea stopped building its own roads and customs facilities while relations with Beijing went cold. So for over a decade, China had a bridge, and North Korea had a field at the other end of it.
That's not infrastructure. That's a diving board.
When the bridge finally opened on Oct. 15, Kim didn't even attend, AP reported. Chinese Premier Li Qiang delivered his remarks by video and called it "a new landmark symbolizing the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK." A landmark of friendship you were too busy to show up for, after it sat waiting twelve years. Somewhere, every friend who's ever been ghosted feels very seen.
Then Kim showed up nine days later for the photo op. Skip the ribbon-cutting, arrive for the motorcade.
The bridge replaces the old Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, built between 1937 and 1943 under Imperial Japan, per the BBC. Think about that. The regime that calls itself the most self-reliant nation on Earth spent eight decades depending on a bridge its old occupier built, then needed twelve more years to finish its half of a new one.
China is North Korea's largest trading partner and its lifeline against heavy international sanctions over the nuclear program, the BBC notes. So the bridge isn't really a bridge. It's an extension cord, and we all know which side is holding the plug.
Kim said his country stands ready to work with China to "expand practical cooperation," per Xinhua. Practical is a bold word from a government that took twelve years to pave a driveway.
Picture a fictional customs officer in Sinuiju named Mr. Pak, stationed at the new border post with a stamp, an ink pad, and twelve years of seniority on a road nobody used. Asked how the first week went, Mr. Pak said, "Very busy. One car." Then he stamped his own lunch.
On the sewer scale, this earns three rats out of five. One rat for the delay, one for the no-show at the opening, one for touring a car factory while your citizens wait for the cars. Beijing keeps the other two in reserve for the next delay.
Kim Jong Un crossed a bridge twelve years late and called it friendship. In North Korea that counts as being early. The country is still waiting on the rest of the decade.
And here's your bill: the average new car in America sold for $50,562 in September, per Kelley Blue Book, $52 shy of the all-time record, which means your car payment moved faster than North Korea's road crew.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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