Description
Along the northern border with China runs the Yalu River and the Tumen River. In between the rivers, and the source of both, is Baekdu Mountain, revered by both the Koreans and Manchurians as the mythic origin of each people. The North Korean government claims that Kim Jong-il was born there when his parents were at a Communist resistance camp at the mountain. The North Korean-Chinese border for 20 miles east of the mountain is "dry, remote and mountainous, barely patrolled," making it one of the crossing areas for refugees from North Korea into China, although most, including refugees from Ryanggang itself, prefer to cross over the Tumen River.
Although all of North Korea is economically depressed, Ryanggang province, along with neighboring North Hamgyong and South Hamgyong provinces, are the poorest, forming North Korea's "Rust Belt" of industrialized cities with factories now decrepit and failing. The worst hunger of the 1990s famine years occurred in these three provinces, and most refugees into China come from the Rust Belt region.
Read more about this topic: Ryanggang Province
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)