CHINA is investigating a Canadian couple who ran a coffee shop on the Chinese border with North Korea for suspected theft of military and intelligence information and for threatening national security, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

    The State Security Bureau of Dandong City in Liao-ning Province is investigating the case of Kevin Garratt and Julia Dawn Garratt, Xinhua News Agency said.

    Neither the ministry nor Xinhua said if the couple had been detained, although the ministry said the Canadian Embassy in Beijing was notified Monday and that the couple’s “various rights have been fully guaranteed.”

    Canadian newspaper The Globe & Mail said the Vancouver couple had been living in China since 1984 and opened a coffee shop called Peter’s Coffee House in Dandong, a gateway to North Korea, in 2008. The couple previously worked as teachers in southern China.

    The Garratt’s western-style coffee shop has a view of traffic flowing across the Yalu River that divides China and North Korea. The couple also had a side business helping people plan tours to North Korea, it said.

    The shop also runs a weekly “English Corner” conversation club, where Chinese can practice speaking English. The newspaper said the shop was named after the couple’s youngest son. The couple had three children, David Etter, an American who knew the family and had run a restaurant in another city bordering North Korea, told the paper(SD-Agencies)