If you're going to Pyongyang, take some cigs

CANCUN CHU/Getty Images

If you're going to Pyongyang, take some cigs
Blake Hounshell | BLOG.FOREIGNPOLICY.COM

FP contributor Andrei Lankov reports from the China-North Korea border, which is more porous than you might think. And like in many a U.S. prison, cigarettes are often the coin of the realm:

Corruption in North Korea is shocking even to Chinese visitors, who are not exactly used to a clean government.

A Korean-Chinese who occasionally goes to visit his relatives described his usual experience: "They are so greedy. Officials take bribes in China, too. But perhaps nowhere in the world are the officials so hungry for bribes as they are in North Korea. At customs, they slowly go through the luggage and sometimes put aside a few things they like, and then they say that those things are not allowed into North Korea. This is the hint, and I have no choice but to tell them to take those things, some clothing or small items. And it is a tradition that everybody who checks you should be given some foreign cigarettes. Last time I took five cartons of cigarettes with me, and only one carton reached my relatives. All others I had to give away to the officials."

Lankov's real point, though, is that information about China, which looks to North Koreans "like a perfect paradise," is seeping back across the border. And those North Koreans lucky enough to make it to the promised land—be it as refugees or businessmen known as chogyo—soon learn that South Korea isn't the hell on Earth they've been taught to hate, but is even richer than China. This can't be a sustainable situation.