Russia-North Korea Open First Road Bridge Over Tumen — SkimNews
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- Russia and North Korea opened their first road bridge across the Tumen River, with capacity for 300 vehicles and 2,323 people daily — initially for cargo, with passenger traffic to follow later this year.
- Truth Hounds said the bridge is "primarily" intended as a covert military logistics corridor for Russia's war in Ukraine, and could transport North Korean troops and officials under the 2024 strategic partnership treaty.
- South Korea's spy agency estimates North Korea has already transferred $7–14 billion in rockets, missiles and artillery shells to Russia by ship, alongside 11,000 North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine.
- The kilometre-long bridge took 495 days to build after Putin's 2024 Pyongyang visit produced the partnership treaty, replacing a workaround where wooden planks were laid across the existing rail bridge.
- Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin, appearing via video link, called the bridge a "new symbol of friendship" and said bilateral ties were "at an unprecedented high level."
- Around 10,000 North Koreans are working at Russian construction and logging sites, many entering on student visas despite a UN ban on North Korean labour.
Why it matters: A land bridge eliminates the bottleneck that ships and a wooden-plank-on-rail workaround had created for North Korea's weapons pipeline to Russia — which has already moved an estimated $7–14 billion in munitions alongside 11,000 troops. Under the 2024 strategic partnership treaty, the crossing gives Moscow and Pyongyang a direct route for personnel and military hardware that prior infrastructure could not support at this scale.
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