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 By Poornima WEERASEKARA Beijing (AFP) Feb 24, 2019
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's armoured train chugged across China on Sunday as he headed to his highly anticipated second summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam. Emulating his late father and grandfather, who took epic train trips when they were leaders, Kim set off on the long journey from Pyongyang on Saturday. The train crossed the border city of Dandong later that day and was expected to reach Beijing on Sunday morning, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency and the specialist outlet NK News. The train's crossing into China follows days of speculation over Kim's secretive travel plans, as his team gathered in Hanoi ahead of the talks expected next Wednesday and Thursday. His departure from the Pyongyang railway station was confirmed by North Korea's official KCNA news agency, but the Chinese side has yet to report on what could be a 60-hour journey to Vietnam. Accompanying the North Korean leader was right-hand man and top general Kim Yong Chol, who met with Trump in the White House last month, along with several other top dignitaries, KCNA said. Security was tight before the train's arrival in Dandong, with police cordoning off the riverfront some 100 metres (yards) from the bridge with tape and metal barriers, and leading an AFP journalist out of the area. A hotel facing the bridge was closed for impromptu renovations on Saturday. "The train is long and crossed the bridge slower than the tourist train, but it's definitely him, there's a lot of police presence," an unidentified source told NK News. Windows on the train were blacked out, the source said, with only headlights turned on as it crossed. - Epic journey? - Kim has previously travelled in his olive green train to Beijing and may stop in the Chinese capital, meeting President Xi Jinping as he did prior to his historic meetings with Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in last year. Or he could save the meeting for his return trip to debrief his country's sole major ally. Trump and Kim met in June in Singapore, producing a vaguely worded agreement on denuclearisation, but progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what the agreement meant. Observers say tangible progress is needed in Hanoi to avoid the talks being dismissed as a publicity stunt. Kim travelled to Singapore last year on a plane lent by Beijing, and it remained unclear whether he would ride all the way to Hanoi by rail -- a nearly 4,000-kilometre (2,500-mile) journey. Another option would be to take the train to Beijing and catch a plane to the Vietnamese capital. But several sources said Kim was expected to arrive in Vietnam by train, stopping at the Dong Dang train station near the China border, then driving to Hanoi. Soldiers were deployed to Dong Dang station and along the road to the capital, according to AFP reporters at the scene. Vietnam previously announced the unprecedented move of closing that 170-kilometre stretch of road on Tuesday between 6:00 am and 2:00 pm -- suggesting Kim could travel on the road between those hours. The Vietnamese foreign ministry said that Kim would "pay an official visit to Vietnam in the coming days", with sources saying he is expected to tour industrial zones in Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces. - Grandfather's footsteps - Rail travel is a family tradition that was started by Kim's grandfather, the North's founder Kim Il Sung, who travelled to Eastern Europe for his longest train ride in 1984. His late father, Kim Jong Il, travelled all the way to Moscow by train in 2001. "It sends a strong message to North Koreans that Kim Jong Un has inherited his grandfather's good qualities, and the Kim Dynasty is stronger than ever," said Koh Yu-hwan, professor at Seoul's Dongguk University. Jeong Young-tae of the Institute of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the safest way to travel would be to take a plane provided by Beijing. "But by choosing to travel by their own special train over a Chinese aircraft, Pyongyang may be signalling its willingness to be independent," Jeong said. The journey from China's frozen northern border to subtropical Vietnam presents a logistical headache and complex security challenges. "The best route is the Beijing-Guangzhou line," said Zhao Jian, who studies China's railway system at Beijing Jiaotong University, describing a route that would see Kim travel straight down to southern China, before heading west into Guangxi province, which borders Vietnam. Justin Hastings, associate professor in international relations at the University of Sydney, said that would be "a pretty major operation." "They would have to clear the tracks, they would have to provide security for basically the entire length of the Chinese eastern seaboard," he told AFP. But China may view the hassle as a necessary cost to get Kim to the summit. "China wants North Korea to make some steps to denuclearise as much as anyone else," Hastings said.
Planes and armoured trains: the Kims' foreign trips If that train trundles all the way to Hanoi carrying the North Korean leader, it'll mean a nearly 4,000-kilometre (2,500-mile), 60-hour journey on board for Kim. He is not long back from his last rail trip. On that occasion, in January, he travelled to Beijing with his entourage in an olive-green train emblazoned with a yellow stripe. The engine and carriages appeared similar, possibly identical, to the train Kim used the previous year to travel to the Chinese capital for his first overseas visit. His predecessors, father Kim Jong Il and grandfather Kim Il Sung, also preferred rail for their domestic and overseas travels. - International childhood, domestic rule - Kim Jong Un studied in Switzerland in the 1990s, including at the International School of Berne, along with his brother and sister and is believed to have visited Germany and France during the period. Unconfirmed South Korean news reports said Jong Un and his brother Jong Chol visited Tokyo Disneyland as children using fake passports to enter Japan in 1991. Infamously, his eldest brother Jong Nam -- assassinated at Kuala Lumpur's international airport in 2017 in a killing widely blamed on Pyongyang -- tried to do the same in 2001, using a Dominican Republic passport, but was stopped at Japanese immigration. Kim Jong Un is known to travel by air domestically, and is said to have accompanied his father on a 2011 train trip to China, but it is believed that last year's trip to Beijing was his first journey abroad since ascending to power. In 2015, the Kremlin announced Kim would be attending ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, but the visit was cancelled with no reason given. - Fear of flying - Kim's father Kim Jong Il was renowned for his fear of flying, limiting his foreign trips to overland journeys to China and Russia by armoured train. His 2011 trip to China was a marathon 6,000-kilometre journey, taking in Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai among other destinations. Kim Jong Il also took a train to Russia in 2001. According to an account published the following year by Konstantin Pulikovsky -- a Russian official who travelled with him during the three-week trip -- the train was stocked with fresh lobster and cases of Bordeaux and Burgundy red wines from Paris. He made a second trip to Moscow in 2011, when he met then-president Dmitry Medvedev in the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude. At the time, residents near the Bureya rail station were told to stay in their houses and not look out of windows as his train arrived. - Air miles - Of the three Kims, the North's founding father Kim Il Sung was the most frequent overseas traveller. He secretly visited Moscow in 1949 to meet Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and seek support for his plan to reunify the divided Korean peninsula by force. The following year, Kim Il Sung's forces invaded the South, triggering the Korean War that pitted Pyongyang's Chinese- and Russian-backed troops against a US-led United Nations alliance. In 1961, Kim Il Sung returned to Moscow to meet then-General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and the two countries signed a mutual defence pact. He was a prominent figure in the Non-Aligned Movement and attended a conference of Asian and African countries in 1965 in Bandung, Indonesia, bringing along his son. In 1990, he travelled secretly to China, reportedly to discuss warming relations between South Korea and the Soviet Union with Chinese leaders, including Jiang Zemin. Kim Il Sung's longest train trip was in 1984, a tour of the Soviet Union and other East European countries -- Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania. The carriages Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il used for their travels are on display in the Kumsusan mausoleum in Pyongyang, where their bodies lie in state -- with a Macintosh computer on Kim Jong Il's desk.
Trump in 'no rush' to push N. Korea to denuclearize Washington (AFP) Feb 20, 2019 US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that while he hoped his next meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would yield much progress, he was also in "no rush" for results. "I'd like to see ultimately denuclearization of North Korea," he told reporters, just over a week out from the February 27-28 summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. "I think that North Korea and Chairman Kim have some very positive things in mind and we'll soon find out, but I'm in no rush," he said, adding that sanctions were contin ... read more
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