Michael Spavor arrest shows perils faced by foreigners in Dandong, on China’s North Korean frontier

Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor’s arrest this week in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong shines a light on the precarious existence of foreigners who live and work along the ultra-sensitive border between China and North Korea.

Spavor, a prominent North Korea watcher and founder of Dandong-based organisation Paektu Cultural Exchange, is the latest in a series of businessmen, aid workers and missionaries to run afoul of authorities in the tense, heavily surveilled border region.

The 43-year-old fluent Korean speaker, one of the few Westerners to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is under investigation by authorities in Liaoning province for “activities that endanger China’s national security”.

“He’s been at the North Korea game a long time, and based in China, so he’s of course on their radar, as any foreigner [would be who’s been] living on the border for that long,” said a friend of Spavor’s on condition of anonymity.

China’s Dandong, which faces the North Korean city of Sinuiju across the Yalu River, is the main hub for trade and travel between the two countries. Before the tightening of sanctions against Pyongyang, about 70 per cent of cross-border trade was estimated to go through the city – most of it textiles, coal, iron ore, and seafood.