Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
08SHENYANG116
2008-08-20 05:20:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Consulate Shenyang
Cable title:  

PRC-DPRK BORDER DEFENSE, BORDER-CROSSERS, NORTH

Tags:  PREL PINR PGOV PREF ASEC KTIP SNAR KN CH 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO4465
PP RUEHCN RUEHGH RUEHVC
DE RUEHSH #0116/01 2330520
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 200520Z AUG 08
FM AMCONSUL SHENYANG
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8480
INFO RUEHOO/CHINA POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC 0130
RUEKJCS/DIA WASHDC 0096
RHHJJAA/JICPAC PEARL HARBOR HI 0057
RUCGEVC/JOINT STAFF WASHDC 0066
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC 0115
RHMFISS/SECNAV WASHINGTON DC
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 0559
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SHENYANG 000116 

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/CM, EAP/K, PRM

E.O. 12958: DECL: TEN YEARS AFTER KOREAN UNIFICATION
TAGS: PREL PINR PGOV PREF ASEC KTIP SNAR KN CH
SUBJECT: PRC-DPRK BORDER DEFENSE, BORDER-CROSSERS, NORTH
KOREAN DRUGS, TRAFFICKING

REF: 07 SHENYANG 196

Classified By: CONSUL GENERAL STEPHEN B. WICKMAN.
REASONS: 1.4(b)/(d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SHENYANG 000116

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/CM, EAP/K, PRM

E.O. 12958: DECL: TEN YEARS AFTER KOREAN UNIFICATION
TAGS: PREL PINR PGOV PREF ASEC KTIP SNAR KN CH
SUBJECT: PRC-DPRK BORDER DEFENSE, BORDER-CROSSERS, NORTH
KOREAN DRUGS, TRAFFICKING

REF: 07 SHENYANG 196

Classified By: CONSUL GENERAL STEPHEN B. WICKMAN.
REASONS: 1.4(b)/(d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: The PRC has made some progress in PRC-DPRK
border security in recent years, but advances ought not be
overestimated, say northeast China experts. Although new
investment, infrastructural improvements and modern
technologies have enhanced defense capacity, the border
remains porous and patrols insufficient. Experts dismiss
the role of "civil militias" in border defense.
Jurisdictional issues complicate dealing with, and
repatriating, North Korean border-crossers; some scholars
have internally advocated jurisdictional adjustments.
North Korean narcotics trafficked into China have hit
borderland Jilin Province hard. Officials there have
protested to the DPRK but characterize Pyongyang as
"looking the other way" at drug cultivation within its
borders. Jilin's studies of a Chinese drug-control
initiative along the PRC-Vietnam border suggest that model
is unviable for the PRC-DPRK border because of Pyongyang's
uncooperative attitude. Results are unclear from an
ongoing anti-drug campaign in the Jilin borderlands also
linked to countering cross-border human smuggling. Recent
media reports have described PRC arrests for the apparent
smuggling and--in one case--trafficking of North Koreans.
END SUMMARY.


2. (C) Poloff recently met in Shenyang, Changchun and
Yanbian with northeastern Chinese experts on PRC-DPRK
border issues. Topics discussed during these unofficial
meetings include border defense, North Korean border-
crossers, and the trafficking of North Korean narcotics
into northeast China.

BORDER DEFENSE: PROGRESS, PROBLEMS, FUNDING, MODALITIES
-------------- --------------


3. (C) Experts pointed to limited improvements in securing
the PRC-DPRK border in recent years but cautioned against
overestimating progress. WU Jianhua (PROTECT),a

government specialist on North Korea and PRC-DPRK border
issues at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences (LASS),
is among the more cynical. Wu argued July 16 that despite
some progress in PRC-DPRK border-defense efforts,
improvements have been minor, sometimes cosmetic and often
"exaggerated" by the "South Korean media and others."
Patrols, for instance, are insufficient, with too many
still conducted on foot, he said. Use of new technologies
by PRC border forces is limited, despite the installation
of cameras and detection devices in certain areas.
Cosmetic improvements, such as adding a token local police
station ("paichusuo"),are often disingenuously publicized
by the PRC as progress in making border residents safer, Wu
also claimed.


4. (C) Wu did cite one major advance in PRC border
security: the development of infrastructure along the
border, particularly in the rougher terrain of borderland
Jilin Province. He noted, for instance, that security
forces--he did not specify either the People's Liberation
Army (PLA) or People's Armed Police (PAP)--have funded new
road construction in border areas. This has allowed an
increase in vehicular patrols, particularly in more remote
areas that have challenging terrains. New funding has also
made available more patrol vehicles, as well as modern
electronics and surveillance gear. Ultimately, however, Wu
argued that much more remains to be done. LU Chao
(PROTECT),another expert on North Korea and border issues
also at based at LASS, shared a similar assessment June 26.
He stressed that the length and porosity of the border
makes meaningful deterrence of criminal elements or border-
crossers difficult.


5. (C) Although these experts agreed that PRC investment in
border security has increased, they declined to offer
supporting data. Recent PRC press reports, however, shed
some partial light on the issue. Jilin Province's Yanbian
Korean Autonomous Prefecture, for instance, invested RMB 10
million (USD 1.5 million) "in the past year alone to

SHENYANG 00000116 002 OF 004


support border-defense construction," according to a March
28 article in the Qianjin Bao, published by the Shenyang
Military Region. The Jilin Daily reported June 24 that
Jilin Province recently invested over RMB five million (USD
735,000) in 38 border villages--comprising four thousand
families--to install alarms and remote sensors to alert
against intruders. The province invested an additional RMB
10 million (USD 1.45 million) to create eleven "special
duty" units, according to the same report, which did not
contain details of past funding levels or missions for
these units. Also unclear is to what extent Olympics-
related considerations may have influenced these
expenditures.


6. (SBU) Northeastern Chinese press reporting also offers
some detail, however limited, on how funds are being
allocated. A March 28 profile of the Yanbian Military
Subdistrict in Qianjin Bao pointed to efforts to boost
intelligence gathering, improve command-and-control
capabilities and enhance border forces' integration with
other security partners. It also highlighted increased
manpower and the growing use of new surveillance and
communications technologies to stem North Korean border-
crossings. On the latter, for instance, the article
mentioned adding "duty posts" during the "high season for
border-crossings." Some 800 North Koreans were stopped
from crossing into the Yanbian Subdistrict in 2007,
according to the report.


7. (SBU) Press reports have hailed the role of civil
militias ("minbing") at the grassroots in bringing
"stability" to the PRC-DPRK border. These militias,
sometimes referred to as "village-protection teams," are
typically comprised of border residents organized to defend
against intruders. A January 2008 Qianjin Bao article
profiled their impact in Yanbian's Helong City, describing
their role in patrolling the border and integration with
conventional border-defense forces. The report also noted
their contribution to the transformation of the city, which
it claimed only "several years earlier" had been a
"disaster area" where "illegal border-crossers and criminal
activities" were "rampant" (changjue).


8. (C) Experts like Wu Jianhua offered a negative appraisal
of the militias' role in border defense, dismissing them as
ineffectual, although some, such as Professor ZHOU Weiping
(PROTECT) of the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences, a
leading specialist on the DPRK and border issues, offered
more nuance. Zhou explained in Changchun on July 23 that
the militias are typically organized by reservists at the
local level, some of whom may receive a token subsidy from
the People's Armed Forces Department (Wuzhuang Bu).
Training and organization tends to be poor, she said,
limiting their utility.


9. (C) More useful at the grassroots level, Zhou claimed,
has been the "lianfang system" (ref A). A bottom-up
initiative that started in Yanbian in the 2004-2005 period,
"lianfang" involves an alarm system linking households in a
given border locality with their local police station.
Upon entry of an intruder, residents can sound the alarm,
tipping off villagers and local police. Zhou explained
that the system is found in localities close to the border,
within the first line of defense ("diyi xian"). Interviews
she conducted along the border in Yanbian indicated that
residents--mainly concerned about possibly violent thieves
from across the border--consider the initiative a success,
one reason she says that its use has spread. Zhou
acknowledged, however, that the lianfang system's benefits
are mostly psychological; residents perceive themselves to
be safer from intruders than in the past. (Note: It
remains unclear whether the practice has spread to border
villages beyond Yanbian, particularly south in Liaoning
Province, near Dandong. End note.)

HANDLING DPRK BORDER-CROSSERS: JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES
-------------- --------------


10. (C) Although one apparent focus of border-security
efforts remains deterring and apprehending North Korean
border-crossers, LASS researcher Wu Jianhua asserted that

SHENYANG 00000116 003 OF 004


certain jurisdictional issues complicate the efforts. Wu
claimed that the PLA has the authority to detain crossers,
but no power to handle ("chuli quan") their cases further.
That power falls to the PAP Border Defense Corps, whose
authority supersedes that of local Public Security Bureau
(PSB) officials at the local "paichusuo" level, he said.
When a PLA patrol captures a border-crosser, detainees must
be remanded to Border Defense, claimed Wu. Border Defense
then notifies the Foreign Affairs Office and Public
Security counterparts, who in turn contact the North Korean
side to arrange for repatriation. Detainees, meanwhile,
are "investigated" pending repatriation; the process
typically takes under fifteen days, claimed Wu. The
process is an administrative "hassle," which is why
repatriation tends to take place in groups, he said.


11. (C) Wu reported that he and other scholars have argued
internally that the PLA should also be accorded the "power
to handle" cases in order to streamline an inefficient
arrangement. He added that organizational tensions become
more complicated on water--particularly near Dandong, which
abuts the Yalu River and Yellow Sea--because additional
actors are involved.

NORTH KOREAN NARCOTICS AND PRC BORDER SECURITY
-------------- -


12. (C) North Korean narcotics trafficked into northeast
China pose another challenge for PRC border security. A
Yanbian official having decades of North Korea experience,
both on cross-border political and economic issues,
described Jilin Province as the province hardest hit by
North Korean drugs. Without specifying a timeframe, he
told Poloff in Yanji July 21 that the DPRK has displaced
Russia, which for years had proven the larger source for
narcotics entering Jilin, especially Yanbian. Liaoning
Province has fared better than Jilin: the more mountainous
North Korean terrain across the border from Yanbian/Jilin
is better suited for growing certain drug crops, noted the
official. Narcotic trafficking is commonly transnational,
involving North Koreans, ethnic Koreans and Han Chinese, as
well as third-country nationals (e.g., South Korea, Japan,
Russia). He claimed that Yanbian officials believe most
drug-trafficking networks operating along the border are
involved purely in drugs (as opposed to more elaborate
ventures involving human smuggling).


13. (C) He went on to say that Jilin officials have
protested to their North Korean counterparts over the
years, demanding that the DPRK take action to stem the
problem. The North Korean reply: the problem stems from
individual farmers beyond the state's control, recalled the
official. Our source claimed drug cultivation and
production in North Korea at present is not state-directed.
But he characterized North Korea as "looking the other
way"; while the North Korean may not itself be directing
production of the narcotics entering China, it is aware of
the activity taking place and chooses not to clamp down.
He added that North Korean officials themselves have, on
occasion, been involved in trafficking narcotics into
China. He recalled one case "several years ago" in which
at least one PRC-based North Korean diplomat was found to
have collaborated with ethnic Korean Chinese to smuggle
drugs into China. The PRC sentenced the ethnic Koreans to
death, while diplomatic immunity permitted the North Korean
diplomat(s) to return home.


14. (C) Queried on Jilin Province's efforts to address the
trafficking of North Korean drugs into China, the official
explained that the strategy continues to center on
intelligence and interdiction. Asked whether Jilin
officials have explored alternative strategies, the
official replied that they have studied the "successful"
crop-substitution and law-enforcement efforts in recent
years along the PRC-Vietnam border. There, he explained,
the Chinese side has paid Vietnamese farmers to plant
alternative crops, provided farming inputs and guaranteed
to purchase set amounts from farmers in a bid to deter a
reversion to cultivation. (Funding for the program has
come from provincial coffers, with contributions from
Beijing, he said.) Our contact, who was once himself

SHENYANG 00000116 004 OF 004


dispatched to the Vietnam border to study the program, said
the officials there adjudged these programs to be
effective. Such success notwithstanding, he said Jilin
officials assess that a similar program is not viable along
the PRC-DPRK border because, unlike the Vietnamese, the
North Korean side has not displayed a willingness to
address the problem.

"CATCH SNAKEHEADS, BLOCK SOURCES": DRUGS, HUMAN SMUGGLING
-------------- --------------


15. (SBU) Local and national PRC press reports for the past
few months have referred to the "serious drug situation" in
borderland Jilin Province. In the lead-up to the Olympics,
moreover, the Jilin Border Defense Corps linked its "Spring
Thunder" anti-drug campaign with an initiative to combat
what a June 17 Xinhua report described as "organized human
smuggling" in the border region involving individuals from
"outside the border." One campaign slogan urged border-
defense forces to "catch snakeheads, block sources, unearth
channels and smash shelters." A stping of progress reports
on seizures in local media have made clear, at times less
obliquely than usual, that North Korea remains the source
country for trafficked narcotics. (Note: "Spring Thunder"
is an annual campaign, but the Olympics endowed it with
increased intensity this year, said our Yanji-based contact
on July 21. End note.)


16. (C) Results of the campaign are unclear. Since 2005,
the Jilin Border Defense Corps has cracked 96 "major" drug
and alien-smuggling cases, arresting over 800 suspects and
seizing roughly 30 kilograms of methamphetamines, according
to "incomplete statistics" cited in a June 24 Jilin Daily
report. In the first six months of this year, the Jilin
Border Defense Corps netted 15 alien smugglers and 54
smuggled individuals; police also seized over 10 kilograms
of methamphetamines and 62 suspects, according to a June 17
Xinhua report. Our Yanbian-based contact assessed that
these are a small fraction of North Korean drugs being
trafficked across the PRC-DPRK border.


17. (SBU) Media reports in past months have described PRC
arrests for the apparent smuggling and--in one case--
trafficking of North Koreans. In Shenyang in early June,
for instance, the Jilin Border Defense Corps and Liaoning
police together arrested one person attempting to "smuggle"
19 individuals out of China via southern Yunnan Province.
Another two individuals, along with an additional
organizer, were caught in Changchun, capital of Jilin
Province, according to the June 5 Xinhua article that
disclosed the two related cases. The article did not offer
the nationalities of the smuggled individuals, but the
reported route out of China and the involvement of the
Jilin Border Defense Corps in the case strongly suggests
that the 21 were North Koreans attempting to transit China.


18. (SBU) By contrast, human trafficking appears to have
been at play in an early April case, according to an April
27 online report by the Yanji PSB. Yanji police, according
to the report, busted a "criminal" ring of at least six
individuals allegedly involved in "selling" (fanmai) and
"trafficking" (guaimai) two "foreign women from outside
China's territory." The outside-China's-territory
formulation is a common euphemism used to indicate North
Korean nationality. Also notable in the report is the use
of both "fanmai" and "guaimai" to distinguish human
trafficking from voluntary human smuggling (i.e., "toudu").
SWICKMAN