DANDONG, China — The Chinese truck drivers who haul grain across the Yalu River are witnesses to North Korea's invisible famine, scouts returning from a landscape of desperation.
They see starvation firsthand, in thin, lethargic bodies; they sense it in the emptiness of fields and factories. They hear it in the cries of children banging on the truck doors: ``Uncle, give me some food.''
And they sense it in the eyes of the hungry who watch as they try to sneak a snack.
The drivers take grain to a starving nation. They come back with scrap metal and hideous stories.
They tell of homeless boys who clamber onto sacks of corn, rip them open with sticks, gather the fallen kernels, and stuff their mouths before guards kick them away.
Of women begging to be smuggled across the border.
Of lifeless little bodies on the roadside.
``I try my best to help,'' said Sun Chenggui, 49, who keeps a box of apples next to the gear shift for snacking and to hand out to children. ``But I cannot save everyone.''
International relief agencies warn that North Korea will run out of food in a few weeks. But North Korea, prideful and xenophobic, refuses to let the rest of the world see the true depth of its problem.
Foreign reporters are banned from the country. Even international relief workers are tightly monitored, and see only what the government allows them to.
But the truck drivers, who make daily trips across the border and are permitted to travel alone, see the raw reality of North Korean life. That makes this town a rare window on a disaster in the making.
* Every day, more than 100 trucks cross the Friendship Bridge to the North Korean city of Sinuiju, more than 100 miles north of Pyongyang.
The main streets of Dandong are choked with blue Chinese rigs. It's easy to spot the ones that have returned from food runs: The flatbeds are loaded with rusting radiators, spoked wheels, old casings and beams.
With most factories idle from a lack of fuel and raw materials, North Korea has nothing but scrap metal left to trade. Workers scrounge for something to barter with Chinese traders.
What these traders are seeing is slow-motion starvation.
For the last two years, North Koreans have survived on meager helpings of grain from the government. Those rations are shrinking as food stocks dwindle. Average North Koreans now get about 100 grams of food a day, or the equivalent of 400 calories. That's about a fifth of what a refugee would get in a U.N. camp.
