Canadian café owners serve up coffee with a view of North Korea

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Vancouverites own more than their share of coffee shops. But none of those java joints offers the front-row seat to unfolding international drama that you get at Peter's Coffee House.

A 20 yuan (about $3) cup of cappuccino at Peter's Coffee House comes with a view of the trucks that lumber each morning across the dark-metal frame of the Friendship Bridge that links this comparatively glittering corner of northeastern China to the greyness that is North Korea on the opposite bank of the Yalu River. Owners Kevin and Julia Garratt, Vancouverites who have lived in China since 1984, serve cheesecake, coffee and Western breakfasts to Dandong's tiny crowd of foreigners plus the growing number of tourists who come here hoping for a peek inside the Hermit Kingdom next door.

These days, the bridge is a crucial indicator of how much support the paranoid regime of Kim Jong-un has left. North Korea has for weeks been threatening war against South Korea and its ally the United States, bringing tensions on the Korean Peninsula to their highest point in years.

Even China, North Korea's only remaining ally, has started to openly question the leadership in Pyongyang. Beijing supported tighter sanctions against its unpredictable friend after the Kim regime ignored its advice and detonated a nuclear device in February.

Despite those sanctions, Mr. Garratt said Tuesday that trade across the Friendship Bridge appears routine. Business is also good in the Dandong supermarkets where North Koreans load up with Western and luxury goods. Some banking avenues have been shut, but it remains possible to send cash from accounts in China into Pyongyang.

Still, drivers who cross the border every day say they're no longer bringing in materials that could have a military use, and those who have helped fleeing North Koreans say there are tighter controls in place over who crosses the border.

Chinese trucks cross the Yalu each morning laden with everything from bags of rice and cans of cooking oil to new cars and kitchen appliances. Each afternoon, the trucks return empty. The North Korean side pays for the Chinese goods either with hard currency carried across the border by hand or with coal that is shipped into China by train.

"Last week we saw hundreds of trucks going in because [Monday] was the Day of the Sun," the 52-year-old Mr. Garratt said, referring to the anniversary of the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim Il-sung. "I think China has tightened up [since the sanctions], but you can't really see that from here."

Dandong bustles with commerce, while across the water the North Korean city of Sinuiju sits silent and dark despite its designation a decade ago as a "special administrative region" where Chinese-style economic reforms were to have been introduced.

The Friendship Bridge was closed Monday and Tuesday, but a line of trucks was already forming Tuesday afternoon at the customs office on the Chinese side of the border in expectation of crossing Wednesday. Some carried bags of rice, others refrigerators. Also in line to cross was a gasoline truck, five new Chinese-made BYD sedans, plus half a dozen construction vehicles.

Traders say that what isn't crossing, for now, is anything that could be seen as useful to the North Korean military. "The sanctions are very serious," said Qin, a 66-year-old truck driver who has been driving back and forth across the Friendship Bridge since the 1990s. "Before, things like chemical products and pipes and steel were very common. Now, very few of these things are going across and the main products going in are fertilizer, washing powder, cooking oil, daily things. It's all civilian trade. If there are any forbidden things, they have to be smuggled."

As for luxury goods, which were specifically targeted by the new sanctions, those appear tougher to stop. Truck drivers say luxury items never flowed in bulk across the Friendship Bridge, but rather were hand-carried into the country by North Koreans who came to shop in Dandong's markets.

And in this shady frontier city – packed with spies, smugglers and missionaries – you can find whatever it is you're looking for, if you have the money. The Chinese side of the Yalu River is lined with neon-advertised hotels, massage parlours and karaoke joints.

Stores selling Apple products are a favourite stop for visiting North Koreans, as are shops selling big-screen televisions. Liquor outlets are also popular. "They come in here and buy red wines and brandy, the cheaper the better," said a saleswoman in Tesco, a British supermarket chain that is famous in Dandong as the place North Koreans go to stuff their bags before returning home where such things are scarce and expensive.

Efforts to crack down on the flow of money into North Korea – where few besides those connected to the regime have hard-currency bank accounts – seem half-hearted.

China made a show of closing the local branch of the Kwangson Bank (listed in United Nations' documents as the Foreign Trade Bank) earlier this year after the United States designated it a "key financial node in North Korea's weapons-of-mass-destruction apparatus." But other banks in Dandong said they were still able to send cash directly to accounts in Pyongyang. "We haven't received notice to stop any of our services," an employee of the China Construction Bank, which has known ties to the Kwangson Bank, told The Globe and Mail.

Since sanctions were tightened and the crisis began, one thing has changed: It has become harder for those wishing to flee North Korea to leave. Christian groups involved in helping North Koreans escape into China, usually en route to South Korea, say that the security situation is such that they've largely had to suspend their efforts during the past two months.

"Along the border between North Korea and China, there is much more security," one Christian activist said. "In the past, you could bribe your way past the soldiers, but now, because of the security situation, they dare not allow anyone in or out."