Tale of two cities on China-North Korea border

DANDONG, China, Oct 19 (Reuters) Sinuiju and Dandong are like darkness and light.

The two cities stare at each other across the Yalu River, the waterway that divides China from North Korea, mirror images of each other but decades apart.

Where the traders and tourism operators of Dandong, a bustling city of 643,000 in China's northeast, show the results of the country's economic reforms, across the river North Korea remains hamstrung by a command economy that has left its people short of food and its industry moribund.

China became a nuclear power in 1964, North Korea last week, when it conducted a nuclear test in defiance of international warnings.

But despite a flurry of diplomacy under way aimed at punishing the North for the test and coaxing it back to talks on its nuclear programme, residents of Dandong view their neighbour not as a threat but as an object of pity and amusement.

Contractor Liu Ming agrees that China was right to condemn the test, despite the traditional friendship between the two countries, which fought together in the Korean War.

''China and North Korea are friends, but there are lines you can't cross, so China opposed the nuclear test. They crossed a line,'' he said.

But he also feels the idea that there is anything to fear from North Korea is laughable.

''It's so poor there! They don't have any proper materials or training. You should see the kind of corn they grow -- it's only this big!'' he said, making a small circle with his fingers.

PITCH BLACK Indeed, North Korea viewed from Dandong is little more than a few clusters of low-rise buildings and a smattering of smokestacks.

Outside of town, Chinese farmers tend neat plots of vegetables among rows of greenhouses.

In North Korea, in some places just a few metres away, there is an eerie lack of people harvesting the scrubby farmland and not a single car visible.

At night, the ''Friendship Bridge'' that spans the river between the two countries is strung with lights that fade into blackness as it reaches the North Korean side.

Power shortages there mean the contrast between pitch black on Sinuiju's riverfront, and flashing waterside restaurants and bars on Dandong's.

Tourists come from around China to gawk at the country across the river, snapping up North Korean stamps and trinkets that laud the leadership of its founder Kim Il-sung and leader Kim Jong-il.

The huge statue of Mao Zedong, his arm raise in salute, at Dandong's train station, is a reminder that China was once also gripped by worship for its leaders and perceived much the same way as North Korea is now -- poor, well-armed and dangerous.

But residents here are more apt to ridicule their neighbour than fear it.

At a theme restaurant, televisions show North Korean programming and North Korean waitresses in traditional robes serve tables full of Chinese tourists.

''They can't speak Chinese,'' says a patron surnamed Jiang visiting from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, pushing the waitress out of the way and taking over a conversation.

He clucks as he looks at the waitresses and the televisions and gestures across the river at North Korea.

''It's so poor,'' he says. ''It's like it was here in the 1960s.'' Reuters PDM DB1227