Business as usual along North Korean border with China
Hong Kong company executive who has just returned from region says there seems to be no rise in tension, despite threats from Pyongyang
While the rest of the world worries whether nuclear war is about to break out, many living near the border of China and North Korea are happily getting on with their lives.
At least that's the view of a Hong Kong businesswoman who recently returned from the area.
"The atmosphere is pretty much the same as the last time I was there in 2011," said Amanda Siu, an executive whose company operates a three-star hotel and a private club in Longjing in the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture in Jilin province.
The atmosphere is pretty much the same as the last time I was there in 2011
Siu - who recently returned from Sanhe in Yanbian, which shares a border with the city of Hoeryong in North Korea - said she did not sense any tension throughout her stay there.
Siu and her colleagues spent more than an hour strolling along the border fence last week, taking pictures of North Korean soldiers with their cell phones and cameras despite warnings for people not to do so. "When I waved to the soldier across the border, he simply waved back to me," she said.
The apparent normality Siu describes stands in stark contrast to the aggressive rhetoric coming out of Pyongyang.
North Korea's repeated threats to attack South Korea and the United States have sent jitters throughout the region. A leading Chinese expert on North Korea this week rated the chances of a war at 70 per cent.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Seoul yesterday on a mission to help resolve the crisis, described North Korea's bellicose warnings of impending nuclear war as "unacceptable by any standard" and said Washington would never accept the reclusive state becoming a nuclear power.