Free Republic

1997 Train Disaster Claims Death Toll of 2,400 People North Korean railroad trains, due to obsolete tracks and diminishing funding, have long been exposed to danger. In 1997, a passenger train that departed from Haeju, South Hwanghae Province, and headed to Manpo, Jagang Province, derailed on a bridge on a descending slope called Kaegogae Hill between Huichon and Chonchon, and plunged into the valley tens of meters below. It was a horrible disaster, leaving few people alive. Passengers were packed into the train like sardines. People's Army units stationed nearby were mobilized to look after the aftermath, with no villagers...

For Kim and North Korea, a sign of mortality By David Scofield SEOUL - Disaster of enormous but still unknown proportions struck North Korea nine hours after Kim Jong-il's heavily guarded train re-entered the Hermit Kingdom and passed through Ryongchon station, 20 kilometers south of the Chinese border. The Dear Leader had returned from "secret" talks with China on defusing the Pyongyang nuclear crisis, gradually giving up his weapons of mass destruction in exchange for massive economic and food aid, clean energy and a better life for his people. The outcome of the talks was not known. Then, it happened:...

DANDONG, China (AP) - North Korean officials say several hundred people were believed killed in an explosion at a train station in the town of Ryongchon near the Chinese border, the British ambassador to North Korea said Friday. The officials also told Ambassador David Slinn and other European envoys stationed in Pyongyang that several thousand people were believed injured and many might still be trapped in collapsed buildings nearby, a British Foreign Office spokesman said in London. Earlier, a U.N. agency in Geneva said the secrective communist government had acknowledged at least 50 people were killed and more than 1,000...

DANDONG, China/SEOUL (Reuters) - A collision between two fuel-laden trains in North Korea caused huge casualties, but South Korean officials said on Friday there was no way of immediately confirming reports of as many as 3,000 dead or injured. Doctors at a nearby Chinese border city hospital braced for a major emergency after Thursday's accident at Ryongchon, which sent plumes of acrid smoke billowing over the town and rained debris for miles (kilometres) around. "This accident is likely to have become tremendous in scale," South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told reporters in Seoul. He said Communist North Korea had...