[Yonhap News Photo]
North Korea is slowly removing building infrastructure near a stalled project to build a cross-border suspension bridge pushed jointly by Pyongyang and Beijing as the symbol of friendship, a US internet news outlet reported.
The 288 million US dollar bridge connecting the Chinese port city of Dandong with Sinuiju in North Korea was slated to open in October last year, but construction mysteriously stopped on the North Korean side, according to NK News, an American subscription-based website that provides news about North Korea.
Originally several groups of buildings were built on the bridge's North Korean side, possibly to help facilitate with what was a major construction project.
Recent satellite imagery showed the buildings have been gradually dwindling in number, with only one set of three remaining, NK News said, adding it's unclear why North Korea would gradually remove the buildings.
"(They are) some buildings to prepare industrial materials like concrete," Lee Chang-ju, a Ph.D. candidate at Fudan University, who studies the Sino-North Korea border area, was quoted as saying.
China also appears to have finished the construction on its side, having built a large multi-story customs office. "On the Chinese side, they already finished construction, they are just doing internal construction work," Lee said.
The new bridge is supposed to replace the aging 71-year-old China- North Korea Friendship Bridge, which currently connects the two traditional allies. A 2013 segment on North Korea's state TV channel KCTV claimed more than 3,000 lorries and cargo ships would pass over and under the bridge per day when completed, NK News said.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
