Some private investors in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, are devastated after suffering massive losses on what they believed would be profitable ventures in the city’s car smuggling industry.
“People who jumped into importing cars through state-sanctioned smuggling now face mountains of debt,” a Daily NK source in the province said recently. “This is happening because the cars Chinese traders are sending are simply too old.”
According to the source, Hyesan’s wealthy residents have been competing to invest in state-approved car smuggling for high profits. However, they’ve been taking significant financial hits as Chinese traders increasingly supply used cars of poor quality.
One investor in their 40s invested money to import 10 used cars, but seven turned out to be “buckets of bolts” of extremely poor quality.
The newly repainted cars look acceptable from the outside, but as they are old models near the end of their lifespan, they reportedly cannot even fetch their purchase price.
“These cars cost about 70,000 to 72,000 Chinese yuan ($9,700 to $10,000) each, but now they’ll fetch only 20,000 yuan ($2,800) if you’re lucky,” the source said. “This means the importer ultimately takes a loss of about 52,000 yuan ($7,200) per vehicle.”
One reason for this situation is the surging demand from car smugglers. As wealthy individuals rush to enter the car smuggling business, Chinese traders have struggled to secure quality vehicles to export and instead send North Korea poor-quality cars cosmetically enhanced to appear decent.
When car smuggling first began, importers profited by bringing in high-quality vehicles. Now, however, smugglers import nearly worthless vehicles they cannot sell and accumulate substantial debt as a result.
“Because Chinese traders must be paid upfront before they send the cars, importers cannot check the vehicles’ quality in North Korea beforehand,” the source said. “Car smuggling requires complete trust in the Chinese traders and advance payment.”
Moreover, smugglers must order at least five cars per transaction, so some individuals are taking even bigger losses after borrowing money to invest.
“The only solution would be for Chinese traders to acknowledge when they send defective cars and compensate the importers, but these traders avoid responsibility, adamantly refusing to admit wrongdoing and pretending to be unaware of problems.”
“People who took losses try to resolve issues over the phone with Chinese traders they’ve never even met, but this just increases their phone bills and rarely resolves anything,” the source said. “Chinese traders who sent low-quality cars simply to increase their profits have no incentive to suddenly change their minds and actively work to solve the problem.”
The smugglers’ troubles are compounded by North Korean authorities’ indifference to their situation, as officials simply collect fees to issue waku, or trading licenses, to import the vehicles.
As some Chinese traders still deliver vehicles more conscientiously, car smuggling continues in Hyesan’s border regions. However, even in such cases, smugglers now conduct deals with extreme caution until they can personally verify the condition of the imported cars.
March 14, 2025 at 10:41AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)