Li Xiang, the Chinese owner of a shop selling South Korean kitchenware in Dandong on the border with North Korea, was born in the isolated Stalinist state and lived there until she was 18. But she doesn't tell her North Korean customers that.
'I feel embarrassed and a sense of betrayal for selling South Korean products when my roots are in the North,' Li, 33, says.
She tells them instead that she is a member of the Korean ethnic minority community in China - almost two million strong, with most living in Jilin province in the northeast.
A descendant of immigrants from Shandong, she was born in Sinuiju to parents who were also born in Korea. They have since moved to China as well.
Despite their Chinese passports, such immigrants still feel culturally Korean. They talk to each other in Korean because they speak the language better than Chinese - even Li, who studied Chinese at university in Jilin. They attended Korean schools, prefer Korean food and would rather sit on the floor than on a chair.
When North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died this month, they showed their sorrow like people in North Korea. Many took flowers to the Dandong branch office of the North Korean consulate in the Liaoning provincial capital, Shenyang. 'My heart missed a beat when I heard the news on TV,' Li said. 'He treated us Chinese well and gave us food, like 500 grams of pork or two pieces of tofu, during Chinese festivals.'