Report: N. Korea building fence to keep people in | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has started building a fence along parts of its border with China, a news report said today, in an apparent move to prevent North Koreans from fleeing the impoverished communist country.

The North has put in place posts along a six-mile stretch along a narrow tributary of the Yalu River, which marks the border between North Korea and China, and also has built a road to guard the area, Yonhap news agency reported.

The North has yet to string barbed wire between the posts, Yonhap reported.

The fence comes less than a year after China built a massive barbed wire and concrete fence along its side of the same river.

North Korea and China share an 880-mile border.

Most of China's trade and aid to the North, on which North Korea heavily relies, moves across the border. Up to 90 percent of North Korea's oil supplies also come across the border from China.

China had left their border lightly guarded but it has became a security concern for Beijing in the past decade as tens of thousands of North Korean refugees began trickling into northeast China.

Many of the refugees take a long and risky land journey through China to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries on their way to eventual asylum in South Korea.

More than 10,000 North Koreans have defected to the South.