North Korea Trade Costs Shift As China Border Logistics Restructure Pricing in South Korea

Customs and logistics companies have proliferated in border areas including Dandong, Liaoning Province, and have restructured freight pricing since mid-last year. A source said the cost per unit for sending goods to North Korea dropped from about 4 yuan last year to roughly 1 yuan now, while the cost of bringing goods from North Korea into China rose from about 14 yuan to around 20 yuan. For a 30-ton truck, shipping to North Korea costs about 5,500 yuan, but bringing goods back costs more than double that amount.

Chinese trade industry officials attribute the gap not to pure transport costs but to stringent customs procedures, quarantine, and processing fees applied to North Korean goods entering China. This has made the traditional trade model of importing cheap North Korean raw materials for resale in China increasingly unprofitable. One Chinese trader reportedly abandoned a deal to buy large quantities of dried mugwort from North Korea after calculating that logistics costs made it unviable. The source noted that last year, sending goods to North Korea cost about 4 yuan per unit, while bringing goods back cost about 14 yuan per unit.