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Firefighters or arsonists?

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200410/200410070022.html

Updated Oct.7,2004 18:18 KST

10,000 Chinese Troops Dispatched to N. Korean Border

10,000 Chinese Peoples Liberation Army regulars were hastily deployed on Monday and Tuesday to the towns of Shahe, Kaishantun and Nanping of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, a district on the border with North Korea, a local source said. According to the source, between Monday and Tuesday, 10,000 Chinese troops entered the villages, which border on the North Korean towns of Musan and Hweryong, North Hamgyeong Province, aboard military trucks. The deployment was so sudden that there were not enough barracks available and soldiers are being quartered at farmhouses. The provincial government has ordered farming families in the area to cooperate in providing board and lodging to 5~6 soldiers per household. It's has yet to be made clear why there was a sudden large deployment of troops to the border region, but locals suppose it might be connected with the fact that the Sanhe-Kaishantun-Nanping region was the area in which the most North Korean defectors appeared. A Korean-Chinese said he heard from soldiers that they were sent to the region ahead of the winter season to prepare for the possibility of mass defections by armed North Korean soldiers. He added that the soldiers said the sudden deployment was because there were "more-than-clear" signs in North Korea of an impending mass defection. The price of 1kg of rice in North Korea has suddenly jumped to W1,700 (as of Tuesday), and with signs of mass starvation, the possibility that soldiers, too, may mass defect as they find it impossible to deal with hunger and malnutrition is gradually rising.