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Russia and North Korea open their first road bridge, one kilometre across the Tumen, 16 months after the first pile

By Staff Writer  |  8 September 2026

The two Prime Ministers opened the crossing by video link from a ceremony at Khasan. The Russian government says the two-lane bridge and its ten-lane checkpoint will handle 300 vehicles and 2,325 people a day, on a border that until Monday had a railway bridge from 1959 and no road at all.

Russia and North Korea opened the first road bridge across their border on Monday. The ceremony was held on the frontier at Khasan, in Russia's Primorye region, and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and the Premier of the North Korean Cabinet, Pak Thae-song, took part by video link. The Russian government's account of the project, published with the transcript of the ceremony, gives the dimensions: the bridge over the Tumen river, which Russia calls the Tumannaya, is about one kilometre long with two traffic lanes, and the whole crossing including its approaches is almost five kilometres. More than 70 people and over 30 pieces of equipment were involved in building it.

The agreement to build it was signed in 2024 in the presence of President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and construction began on 30 April 2025 at a ceremony the same two Prime Ministers attended. Mr Pak said the bridge had been completed in 495 days.

Now, just 16 months later, we are witnessing a truly historic event.

Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of Russia

The checkpoint

The Khasan border crossing point was built at the same time as the bridge. The government says its design provides for ten traffic lanes and that, once fully operational, it will handle 300 vehicles and 2,325 people a day, with capacity for expansion. The access road joins the Ussuri federal highway, part of the West-East transport corridor from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. Until Monday the two countries, whose border runs along the river, had a railway bridge, the Friendship Bridge commissioned in 1959, and an air service, but no road connection. The government says the rail link had become insufficient for their transport needs and that the new bridge gives a year-round road connection.

The bridge has been named after Yakov Novichenko, a Red Army officer who in 1946 is credited with shielding Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder, from a grenade with his body. Relatives of Mr Novichenko attended the opening.

I hereby declare that the road bridge across the Tumannaya River is now complete.

Pak Thae-song, Premier of the Cabinet of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

What each side said it is for

Mr Mishustin said the expansion of border transport infrastructure would give a powerful impetus to trade, economic, scientific, technological and cultural cooperation, that Russia was expanding logistics capacity in the Far East, and that the crossing would create jobs and open opportunities for tourism. He said relations between the two countries were at an unprecedented level of strategic partnership. He also said it was symbolic that the bridge carried Mr Novichenko's name, because his act echoed what he called the courage of the Korean heroes who had recently fought shoulder to shoulder with Russian soldiers and defended Russian soil. That is the Russian Prime Minister's description of North Korean troops fighting on Russia's side, and it is given here as his.

Mr Pak said the bridge symbolised friendship and cooperation between the two countries, thanked the designers and builders of both, and said the structure would make a contribution to economic development and living standards. He formally authorised the start of traffic after the North Korean Minister of Land and Environment Protection, Yang Yong Jin, reported the bridge complete. The Russian side's report to Mr Mishustin was made by Andrei Nikitin.

For an engineering readership the numbers are the story. A one-kilometre two-lane river bridge with a ten-lane checkpoint and five kilometres of approaches, built in 495 days on a remote border, is a fast programme by any standard, and the government's own figure of some 70 people on the job is a small workforce for it. The capacity it opens, 300 vehicles a day, is modest against the railway that already exists. The point of the bridge, on both governments' account of it, is that it exists at all.