Contact Admin. From talking to locals, I collected a fair amount of anecdotal information about cross-border trade, social interactions in Changbai-Hyesan, and the impacts of the day speed campaign in the DRPK.
Just for the record, Hyesan appears to have quite a few more lights on at night I counted more than forty than more-wealthy Sinuiju. I also found some nice healthy Jilin marijuana plants all along the Chinese side of the river. As to the prostitution story: In any case, my task is to clean up and expand upon one Daily NK translation.
My modified format has the original Chinese followed by my modified English version. It is a state-owned and -operated inn where central party cadre often stay. But from , the superintendant, Mr. Lee and the manager Mr. Baek began to organize women in Hyesan areas to sell sex. They charged a price of 10, to 15, North Korean won per room for rooms only used by cadre , and 4, won per room to average customers.
They even summoned girls who had just graduated from middle school to engage in selling sex at the inns. This pimp has connections on the Chinese side, so some prostitutes even crossed the border and went to Changbai county to work. Although its primary aspect as a facility is to house rail passengers passing through the Youth Station, it is reported there are many more customers who arrive instead to spend the night patronizing prostitutes.
Most people who come here are Chinese businessmen who use the prostitutes. One aspect that gets underplayed in the translation is the extent to which much of the prostitution activity in North Korea is actually not organized; the article describes subtly how state pressure drives the sex trade into new places. In this sense, the very entropy of the North Korean sex trade forms a very different structural picture, than, say, the comfort women system which some persuasive writers like Joshua Stanton have drawn in with reference to this story.
