When Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he made building a border wall between the United States and Mexico his signature pledge. Most Americans laughed it off as a far-fetched promise bordering on delusion, but they were taken aback when Trump, after winning the presidency, actually set out to build the wall. Undeterred by fierce resistance from civil society, he built 727 kilometers of wall during his first term in states bordering Mexico, including California and New Mexico. The first Trump administration tried to make Mexico bear the cost, but this only created trade friction, and the government ultimately had to build the wall itself at a cost of 15 billion dollars in federal budget.
His successor, Joe Biden, signed an executive order to halt all border wall construction, but as illegal immigration surged, he resumed building 32 kilometers of wall in Texas in 2023. The wall erected between the United States and Mexico, along with tightened crackdowns on illegal immigration, sharply curtailed the economic activity that had openly taken place between the two countries' borders. Labor migration, in which people crossed the border in search of opportunity, fell drastically. Tourism and shopping near the two countries' borders also took a hit.
The term "border economy" is used to refer to the unique economic activity that emerges in regions where nations meet. It describes the phenomenon of trade and labor exchange that takes advantage of differences in tariffs, wages, and prices between two countries. In the European Union (EU), workers commute across borders, creating active economic exchange. The Yalu and Tumen river basins, where North Korea meets China and Russia, are also places where considerable informal exchange and trade take place. When diplomatic conflicts and wars break out, border economies stagnate, and some of them retreat into the underground economy.
The government recently decided to move the Civilian Control Line an average of 2 kilometers northward and to lift or ease large-scale military facility protection zones. It is a measure that can breathe vitality into border-region economies suffering from the risk of regional extinction. But residents' safety and national security must not be shaken. Whether the frozen inter-Korean relations can recover, allowing inter-Korean economic cooperation that crosses the Civilian Control Line — such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex — to return to a normal track, remains shrouded in fog.
