Well, Something Has to Go Into Those Empty Coal Pits

Not content with enslaving its women, torturing its refugees, and vacuuming out North Korea’s natural resources, China is now turning North Korea into its industrial waste dumping ground (ht):

North Korean organizations in charge of raising foreign currency are bringing in and burying industrial waste from China for money, a report released yesterday said. The report also said North Korean scientists who complained that their country is turning into China’s industrial waste site have been purged in North Korea.

Daily NK, a media outlet on North Korean affairs, quoted a source in the North’s South Hamkyong Province as saying, “The soil survey research center at Hamhung Institute of Technology released a research paper on its study of land pollution resulting from burial of industrial waste from China and a letter urging countermeasures to the Central Committee of the (North Korean) Workers’ Party. The institute was dismantled and senior officials and researchers were all purged.

“The research paper details how China’s industrial waste is sent to North Korea and dumped,” the source said, adding, “It also strongly warns against the practice of North Korean factories lacking sewage treatment facilities and freely dumping sewage into rivers freely.

One North Korean scientist said, “Our country in effect is turning into China’s industrial waste site,” adding, “Even tap water in Pyongyang has become so polluted that it is no longer potable.

In China’s partial defense here, I’m not sure North Korean scientists can gather the kind of data needed to prove China’s responsibility for the bad water in Pyongyang. At Chongjin in particular, satellite photos hint at what an environmental disaster area North Korea is becoming, presumably without China’s help:

For China, this may be about removing a potential source of political instability. It also reverses a trend in which China had been an importer of so-called “e-waste” from wealthier nations.

Will a reunified Korea eventually ask China to help clean up these messes?