First road bridge opens between Russia and North Korea

The neighboring countries opened their first car bridge to vehicle traffic on Monday  one and a half years after construction began – Russian and Korean PMs joined the opening ceremony remotely.

The news came from Russian state-run news agency TASS which reported the official completion of the crossing across the Tumen River, adding also that the construction of the Khasan border checkpoint has been completed.

Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin and Korean counterpart Pak Thae Song joined the ceremony remotely to launch the infrastructural project named after Yakov Novichenko, the Soviet Officer who saved North Korea’s first leader Kim Il Sung from an assassination attempt in 1946.

The construction follows the earlier Korea-Russia Friendship Bridge, a railway crossing upstream of the road bridge which has been the only link connecting the two countries since the late 1950s.

After the PMs speeches, a convoy of vehicles crossed the bridge from each side, with the Russian convoy being led by Yakov Novichenko’s personal automobile.

The almost a kilometer-long bridge will be a part of a larger 4.7km Russian border crossing project linking checkpoint facilities on both sides of the river.

Despite the completion ceremony, however, it remains to be seen whether the bridge will see regular traffic between the two countries, or if it was meant more of a symbolic gesture of support between the two neighbors.