A China–North Korea Bridge Opens 12 Years After It Was Built

Twelve years after it was constructed, the New Yalu River Bridge between China and North Korea is finally operational, Deutsche Welle reports, describing the opening as the latest sign of warming ties between the two countries.

A finished crossing that sits unused for more than a decade is a strange object — infrastructure waiting on a relationship. The opening of a bridge is usually a transport story, but here it may read more like a signal, which is how Deutsche Welle frames it: not an engineering milestone so much as a marker of where two neighbours now stand with each other.