A new bridge linking China and the DPRK under construction, seen from the Chinese side. The two countries are improving facilities connecting them to develop economic and trade exchanges. [Photo / China Daily]

Regime tries to emulate China's policies, reports Bao Chang from Dandong city, Liaoning province.

Looking across the Yalu River at the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the country on the opposite bank seems mysterious and remote, with pale lights glimmering from a row of houses, vying for attention with the rising stars as night falls.

On the Chinese side of the river, the streets are awash with color from the neon lights flickering in Dandong's new district and presenting a very different nocturnal scene.

"The DPRK looks like China during the 1970s. I haven't seen many changes there over the past decades," said Li Jian, an elderly man who has lived in Dandong, a Chinese city that borders the DPRK, for more than 50 years.

However, an advertising board written in both Chinese and Korean, which has been standing on DPRK's Hwanggumpyong Island since June, says change is afoot and an opening up to the rest of the world is under way.

It was in that month that China and the DPRK agreed to establish three special zones to deepen economic and trade ties between the two countries and to help promote economic relations between the so-called Hermit Kingdom and the rest of the world.

The agreement followed a visit to China by the DPRK's leader Kim Jong-il in May.

Emerging as if from hibernation, the DPRK is warming to Chinese-style economic reforms.

"The area will help boost the DPRK's foreign direct investment, turning the zones into a hot investment destination," said Dai Yulin, Party secretary of Dandong.

The first big investment opportunities are likely to come in the field of mineral mining as the infant market opens up. The DPRK's iron ore deposits are in the spotlight as steel makers expand capacity to meet the growing demand in the Asian and African markets, according to China Sunny & Forecasting Information Consultant Ltd (S&F), a Beijing-based market research company.

The amount of exploitable iron ore in the DPRK will reach 10 million tons annually by 2015, up from 6 million tons this year, an increase prompted by an expansion in investment by overseas companies, according to estimates from S&F.

The British company Global Steel Holdings Ltd has been negotiating with the DPRK government for a stake in the Musan iron ore mines in the country's North Hamgyong province, estimated to have reserves of more than 5 billion metric tons.

Pramod Mittal, a brother of the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and the chairman of Global Steel, a closely held company of the Mittal family, visited Pyongyang last year, reportedly to talk to senior government officials and begin the groundwork necessary for gaining a share of the Musan reserves.