It connects the cities of Dandong in China and Sinuiju of North Korea, by railway and roadway but pedestrians are not allowed to cross between either side.

The bridge was constructed by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) between April 1937 and May 1943 during its occupation of Korea and its puppet state of Manchukuo (now northeast China).

Further downstream, construction work on the New Yalu River Bridge began in October 2010.

Both bridges were attacked and bombed by American military aircraft throughout most of the Korean War.

From November 1950 to February 1951, the United States Air Force (USAF) used B-29 heavy bombers and F-80 fighter-bombers to repeatedly attack and destroy the bridges in an attempt to cut off the flow of Chinese military and troop supplies to the badly weakened North Korean armed forces as well as their own forces fighting alongside them there.