Yanji City

Yanji 延吉市 · 연길시
County-level city
Yanji skyline, 2010.
Location in Yanbian Prefecture; Yanji is highlighted in red
Yanji Location of the city centre in Jilin
Coordinates: 42°54′N 129°30′E / 42.900°N 129.500°E / 42.900; 129.500Coordinates: 42°54′N 129°30′E / 42.900°N 129.500°E / 42.900; 129.500
Country	People's Republic of China
Province	Jilin
Prefecture	Yanbian
Township-level divisions	6 subdistricts 3 towns
Seat	Henan Subdistrict
Area
• Total	1,332 km2 (514 sq mi)
Elevation	179 m (587 ft)
Population (2007)
• Total	650,000
• Density	490/km2 (1,300/sq mi)
Time zone	China Standard (UTC+8)
Website	yanji.gov.cn (Chinese) (Korean)

Yanji (Korean pronunciation: [jʌnɡil]), is the seat of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in eastern Jilin province, People's Republic of China. Its population is approximately 400,000 of which a large section is ethnic Korean. Yanji is a busy hub of transport and trade between China and North Korea.

Yanji and its environs were largely unpopulated until the 1800s when Qing dynasty rulers of China began to encourage migration there, as an effort to stem encroaching Russian expansion.

Yanji is now part of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, which is situated in eastern Jilin. Yanji City is centrally located, surrounded by five other county-level cities and two rural counties (see map); it is the administrative seat of the prefecture.

The North Korean military detonated its second nuclear test in May 2009 close to the Chinese border, and the blast set off an earthquake of magnitude 4.5 with an epicenter only 112 mi (180 km) from Yanji. The mutual goodwill of the Chinese and Korean populations in the region was put under severe strain, and many in Yanji expressed newfound feelings of dismay and insecurity regarding their North Korean neighbors.

A South Korean pastor, the Reverend Kim Dong-shik, was kidnapped in Yanji in January 2000, one of numerous well-publicized North Korean abductions of South Koreans: a suspect of mixed Korean-Chinese descent, said to have been trained in Pyongyang, was arrested and charged with the crime in December 2004.

Yanji was the starting point of an international dispute in 2009 when two American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained by North Korean border guards when, after leaving Yanji, they overstepped the nearby demarcation line. The two were freed only after intervention at the highest level, by former US President Clinton.