The two rivers and the region of Paektu Mountain between their headwaters form the border between North Korea and China.

In Tumen, Jilin, a riverfront promenade has restaurants where patrons can gaze across the river into North Korea.

[4][5][6][7] Noktundo, a former island (now effectively a peninsula) at the mouth of the Tumen, has been a boundary contention between Russia and North Korea.

[8] The Qing Dynasty ceded the island to Russia as part of the Primorsky Maritimes (East Tartary) in the 1860 Treaty of Peking.

[10] In 2016, China released 800,000 salmon seedlings into Tumen river in order to expand the regional fishing industry and meet the increasing demand for sea products.

"Long, desolate stretches of the Chinese-North Korean border are not patrolled at all", according to a New York Times article.

[12] The history of conflict in the area (examples include incidents during the Battle of Lake Khasan) was alluded to in singer Kim Jeong-gu's song 'Tearful Tumen River (눈물 젖은 두만강)', which became an ode to families separated by such tragedies and by defections during the Korean War.