Beginning December 10, land routes between North Korea and China will be cut off. Tourists will be able to reach the capital of North Korea only by direct flights from Beijing and Shenyang. American sources say Chinese troops have been massed at the border.

Pyongyang (AsiaNews/Agencies) - North Korea has chosen the policy of international isolation, and is closing its northern and southern borders. Beginning December 10, land routes to and from China will be interrupted; Chinese tourists who want to go to the North Korean capital will have to take direct flights from Beijing or Shenyang. No visas will be given to the inhabitants of the three Chinese provinces bordering North Korea, who are former North Korean citizens now in exile.

The decision to close the frontiers with China - beginning with the most important one, that of Dandong - follows the declaration, issued on Wednesday, November 12, by North Korean general Kim Yong-chol, the delegate for dialogue between the two Koreas, which anticipated the closing of the border with South Korea beginning on December 1. A Chinese railroad official in Dandong says that freight trains are still moving between the two countries - four per week - but says he does not know whether there are also passengers inside.

China has long been an ally of North Korea, supporting it with aid and weapons in the Korean War from 1950-1953. Beginning in 2006, relations deteriorated to such an extent that the Beijing government built a defensive wall along the border, following the nuclear experiments conducted by Pyongyang and the flight of numerous North Korean refugees who sought political asylum in China. The crisis in relations between the two communist regimes has been confirmed for the Financial Times by a United States official, who says that Chinese troops are amassing at the border with Korea.

The country, already marked by famine and poverty, seems to be choosing isolation from the outside world: rumors about the health of Kim Jong-il and the election of a conservative president in South Korea - who has promised new aid to the North on the condition that it stop its nuclear activity - has driven the communist regime to close itself up and play the card of blackmail with international diplomacy. On the evening of November 9, North Korean leaders released a statement in which they say they are ready to block the activities of the Red Cross and cut off telephone connections with Panmujom, the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. The North Korean foreign minister also denies that access has been granted to international nuclear inspectors investigating the North's activities, in spite of repeated appeals from Washington reminding the North of verbal agreements reached last month in Pyongyang by U.S. envoy Christopher Hill.

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