A North Korean refrigerated cargo ship approached. The 72-year-old Kolchanov hoped it would bring some much-needed work for his company, which provides document logistics and other services.

“The Koreans are our last hope for keeping ourselves fed,” he said in his office, based on the ground floor of a Soviet-era apartment block where bedsheets and undergarments dangle from the balconies.

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Seven time zones and 4,000 miles from Moscow — or a 100-minute flight from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang — Russia’s Far East sees its fate bound up in the diplomacy playing out on the Korean Peninsula and in Washington.

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An outcome that opens up North Korea to more trade and investment could be a boon for places such as Nakhodka, just 115 miles from the North Korean border. The region is so close, in fact, that the ground shook during last year’s nuclear test blast by the regime of Kim Jong Un.

The region’s bonds with Korea have deep — and tragic — roots.

Before World War II, some 170,000 ethnic Koreans lived in the Russian Far East. Stalin viewed them as a liability because Japan occupied Korea at the time. He had virtually all of them loaded onto trains and relocated to Central Asia.

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Now, South Korean tourism to the Russian Far East is booming, marketed as a “European getaway two hours away.” More than 70,000 South Korean tourists came in the first half of this year, on pace to double last year’s total.

North Korean officials, in turn, flock to Russia’s Far East to find ways to boost trade despite sanctions. At a festival this month to mark North Korea’s 70th year, young women in traditional dress hawked candy, cosmetics and North Korea’s version of Viagra.

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“Please buy something!” Cha Jaegon, an organizer of the fair who had flown in from Pyongyang for the occasion, said in English.

Russians, meanwhile, grumble that the international economic squeeze on Kim’s regime is driving away the low-cost North Korean labor that has been the backbone of construction work across the Russian Far East.

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The Kremlin invited both Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in to attend a regional economic forum this month in Vladivostok, the biggest city in Russia’s Far East. Neither showed up.

But many of the discussions touched on the ongoing overtures on the Korean Peninsula, capped most recently by a summit in Pyongyang between Kim and Moon.

At one session in Vladivostok, North Korean and South Korean officials offered ideas for a rail link from South Korea to Russia’s ­Trans-Siberian Railway — which would sharply cut travel time for South Korean products to Europe.

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Earlier this month, Vladivostok’s waterfront throbbed with martial melodies and triumphant chords. The anniversary celebration for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the official name of North Korea — was in full swing, complete with a giant video screen venerating the leader Kim.

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Booths were decorated with the Russian and North Korean flags.

Curious South Koreans toured the fair, some of them getting personal tutorials in North Korean history from Jong Song Ho, the head of the North Korean delegation, who was wearing a sleek blue suit, aviator sunglasses and a red pin with likenesses of his country’s leaders.

There are thousands of North Koreans living in Russia near the border, including families of diplomats based at the country’s Vladivostok consulate, employees of Vladivostok’s North Korean restaurants and laborers contracted out to Russian companies.

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Still, Li Almaz, a South Korean who runs a tourism business in Vladivostok and has lived there for five years, said he has no North Korean friends.

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“They’re afraid,” he surmised.

The sanctions frustrate local business leaders, but some are seeking ways to profit from the region’s proximity to North Korea.

Valentin Pak, a local politician and businessman, has converted a room in his office suite into a storage area for non-sanctioned North Korean consumer goods he hopes to sell to Russians.

They include items as simple as a four-inch-tall figure of a pig dressed up as a North Korean pilot. The ears are affixed asymmetrically. The red-star insignia on the sleeve was printed on paper and cut out with scissors. The nose has two uneven dots scrawled with a marker.

It will go for around $3, Pak said.

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“It’s all about revenue for them,” Pak said of the North Koreans.

The United States alleges that North Korea uses the Russian Far East as a hub of illicit trade to get around United Nations sanctions, which Russia voted for last year and now wants to loosen.

In August, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned two Vladivostok shipping companies for taking part in the practice.

A week later, Treasury slapped sanctions on Kolchanov and his small shipping agency, Profinet.

“Kolchanov was personally involved in North Korea-related deals and interacted directly with North Korean representatives in Russia,” Treasury said in a statement to The Washington Post.

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As a shipping agent, Kolchanov handles the reams of paperwork required for ships to enter and exit the port, collects fees, and solves last-minute problems on board.

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Kolchanov admits that he often does business with North Korea but insists he did nothing illegal.

When the sanctions hit, he said, six empty North Korean oil tankers that were his clients were entering or already at the port of Vladivostok.

He serviced all six of them, but he said they all left without taking on any oil. He presented business records that purported to back up his account.

Kolchanov figures that those six ships are what got him in trouble with Treasury, which mentioned “at least six separate occasions” on which he serviced North Korea-flagged ships. A Treasury official declined to detail further why the department sanctioned Kolchanov but said that it has had the authority to sanction people “operating in the energy or transportation industries of the North Korean economy” since 2016.

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Kolchanov said he will push ahead in doing legal business with North Korea because his other foreign customers have largely cut ties.

“They are our neighbors, right?” Kolchanov said of North Korea. “You need to be friends with your neighbors.”