Amazing Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture

        Map showing position of Jilin

For an outsider, this is totally fascinating. Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in Jilin province, in the northeastof China.

Yanbian is south of Heilongjiang, east of Jilin’s Baishan City, north of North Korea’s North Hamgyong Province, and west of Russia.

Yanbian is designated as an autonomous prefecture due to the large number of ethnic Koreans living in the region. The prefectural capital is Yanji, and the area is 42,700 km².

      Changbai Mountain
    Heavenly Lake

Founded on Sep 3, 1952, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is the largest area in China where Korean Minority Chinese live, and one of the first regions where the policy of regional National Autonomy was applied. There are twenty nationalities in the region, the Han, Korean, Man, Hui and so on. Of the overall 2,185,000 population there are 859.000 with Korean Nationality accounting for 39.3% of the whole.

Neighboring on Russian Primorskiy Kray to the east and by Tumen River neighboring on both Hamkyongbuk Do, Yanggang Do of North Korea to its south, Yanbian lies in the eastern part of Jilin Province.

Yanbian has 522.2km of border with China and 233 km of Sino-Russian border.

With 78.2% of the forest cover it is one of the major forest zones in China. Theoretically, there are reserves of hydraulic energy of 1,400,000 kilowatt from 487 rivers. 34 small hydraulic power stations are in actual use.

Yanbian has tremendous tourist potential with the Changbai Mountain, the unique frontier characteristics as well as the ancient customs of the Korean Nationality making it a place well worth exploring.
In 1992, it was graded as one of 40 “A” class nature preserves in our country after an evaluation by the World Wildlife Fund(WWF).

There are rich resources with industry building up. Grain crops are giving way to crops of higher commercial value and of high yield.

   Changbai Mountain
      waterfall

Consequently, with the orientation towards an efficient agriculture, a green agriculture and an agriculture for commercial value, a number of agricultural production bases are being established.

Yanbian University is a comprehensive university with national minority characteristics. There are seven colleges such as agricultural college, medical college, science and technology college. There are 304 with higher education background for every 10 thousand people in Yanbian which is above the average both nationally and provincially.

Yanbian comes under many of China’s policies of benefit in an attempt to attract appropriate industry to the area.

There are 274 roads of assorted classes in Yanbian with a total length of 3,875 km.

Operated as turnpike roads, the two national class roads and the three provincial class ones in the prefecture territory link up with roads in Korea and Russia.

Yanbian has railway transportation available in each of its city and county. International railways are also accessible for transportation between China Tumen—North Korea Namyang and transportation between China Huchun—Russia Kamyshovaya. The annual volume of railway passenger traffic of Yanbian is 13,400,000 passenger/times and railway haulage up to 14,000,000 tons.

There are domestic air links from Yanji to Changchun, Shenyang, Tianjin, Dalian, Yantai, Shanghai, Beijing, as well as international air routes from Yanji to Seoul, and from Yanji to Vladivostok.

There are two local telephone networks, with installed capacity 1,210,000 and 48,000 respectively used in Yanji and Hunchun.

There are four provincial class development zones: Yanji, Dunhua, Antu, Tumen Cities. Subsequently, with the permission from the State council, a Hunchun Export Processing Zone and a Russian-Chinese Trade Fair in Hunchun have been established in thw Hunchun Border Economic Corporation Zone.

There are 487 listed enterprises in the Yanbian Development Zones: accumulative product of RMB1.4647 million, accumulative export value $4.420 million.

There are 11 frontier crossing ports available in Yanbian, 8 Sino-N. Korean, 2 Sino-Russian, 1 international airport.

The annual volume of cargo transit for the above crossing ports is 5 million tons.

The place is a tourist heaven. In Fangchuan, Hunchun, you will be ‘Waken up at night by a dog’s bark from the neighboring country’. Which is a wonderful piece of imagery.

In Cuijizhe’s Korea/China Story we learn that over 70% of the prefecture was originally forest  and there are 1,460 species of native animals and 250 species of native plants.