2023-09-12 23:21:56
The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, arrived in Russia this Tuesday for a long-awaited meeting with President Vladimir Putin. He made the trip by train, as in 2019, when he arrived in the Russian city of Vladivostok in what was his last trip abroad.
Kim left Pyongyang on Sunday on his private train, accompanied by a large entourage of “key executives from the party, government and armed forces agencies.”
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On Monday, North Korea and Russia confirmed the meeting that the leaders of both countries will hold, but did not detail the exact date or place.
This photo taken and released by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on September 12, 2023 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un getting off the train car at Khasan train station. (AFP).
At the time of Kim’s arrival in Russia, Putin was in Vladivostok participating in an economic forum.
Both the United States and several analysts believe that the summit between Kim and Putin seeks to seal an arms sale agreement, in a context in which Russian troops appear to be at a standstill in their war in Ukraine.
Experts say Russia wants artillery shells and anti-tank missiles from North Korea for the war in Ukraine, in exchange for advanced technology for satellites and nuclear submarines and food aid for Kim Jong-un’s country.
Kim Jong-un upon arrival at a station in the Russian border town of Khasan on April 24, 2019. (Photo by Alexander SAFRONOV / Primorsky Krai Administration Press Service / AFP).
In 2019, Kim’s last trip abroad was to Vladivostok, for his first summit with Putin after the collapse of nuclear disarmament talks between North Korea and the United States, then governed by Donald Trump.
Kim’s train trip to Russia in 2019. (AFP).
At this point, it is worth describing what the train that Kim uses is like for several of his trips both outside and inside the country, and why he most often opts for that means of transportation.
Slow and luxurious
This is Kim Jong-un’s tenth trip abroad since he took power in 2011. His previous visits occurred between 2018 and 2019.
Kim, like his father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung, prefers to travel by luxury armored train. Of his nine previous trips abroad, four were by train, three by plane and two by car.
Kim Jong-un receives a bouquet of flowers from a Chinese girl upon his arrival at the Beijing train station. (Photo by KCNA VIA KNS / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP).
The current leader of North Korea used the train in March 2018 to travel to Beijing, the capital of China, in what was his first trip abroad.
Kim Jong-un used a Boeing 747 plane
of Air China to fly to Singapore in 2018, for what was his first meeting with then-President of the United States Donald Trump.
Kim Jong-un arrives at the Dong Dang train station, Lang Son province, Vietnam, on February 26, 2019. (Photo by AFP).
Then, in 2019, Kim traveled by train to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, for his second summit with his American counterpart Donald Trump. The journey lasted about 60 hours.
Kim’s train is green with a yellow line. It has 21 cars.
It features a red carpeted ramp through which the supreme leader can get on and off the train.
It has an average speed of less than 60 kilometers per hour. The bulletproof armor of each car makes it much heavier and slower than a conventional train.
Some testimonies and audiovisual material show that the train serves imported French wine and has pink leather seats, according to Business Insider.
One of Kim’s train cars. (KCNA).Kim Jong-un in a train meeting room in 2015. (Video capture).
There are also meeting rooms, flat-screen TVs, laptops, and bedrooms.
Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian official who traveled on the train with Kim Jong-il in the early 2000s, said he saw red wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy and silver chopsticks on the train.
“On board you could order any dish from Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and French cuisine,” Pulikovsky said.
Kim Jong-il and Konstantin Pulikovsky near Vladivostok in July 2001. (Igor Kochetkov/AP).
According to the American newspaper The New York Times,
Kim Jong-il was afraid of flying and that is why he made his few official visits on a train.
A safe train
According to South Korean intelligence reports collected by BBC Mundo, Kim Jong-un has up to 90 armored cars at his disposal.
In addition, some diplomats who have traveled on the train said that there are cars in which armored cars are transported.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry has also said that the train has “assault weapons and a helicopter for emergencies.”
This ministry assured that Kim prefers to travel by train because it offers much higher security conditions than a plane, where “the chances of survival are considerably reduced” in the event of an attack.
El tren de Kim Jong-un and Beijing, China. (Archyde.com).
It can turn back in case of unforeseen events and its itineraries are “more difficult to anticipate” than those of an airplane.
During the trip to Hanoi, Kim increased security measures by deploying military forces along the route.
According to Seoul, on each Kim trip three trains are used that travel together: one is a security train, where at least 100 agents go who are in charge of inspecting the tracks and stations through which the railway passes, in order to to detect bombs and other types of threats. The North Korean leader is in the middle. While in the third the bodyguards and some supplies are transferred, BBC Mundo indicated.
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