Kim’s peace train is the last word in luxury
hanoi — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s trip to Vietnam for a summit with US President Donald Trump was shrouded in mystery until a green train with yellow horisontal stripes was spotted crossing the Yalu River into China on Saturday evening.
Kim, his father and grandfather, North Korea’s three leaders in succession since World War Two, have all loved trains, but no one knew how Kim intended to make the journey to Hanoi for his second summit with Trump, on Wednesday and Thursday, until the train rumbled over the border bridge.
It is not clear if Kim will travel all the way to Vietnam by rail — it will take him some two and a half days to do so — and it is possible he could stop on the way and fly.
If he does choose to stay on the tracks, he will be travelling in style.
His train resembles the armoured ones his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-sung, used over the years.
It has 21 carriages equipped with all-white conference rooms, dining cars and a quarters.
Some carriages are decked out with pink leather chairs, big-screen televisions and ivory-coloured curtains hanging in the windows, North Korean state media has shown.
The train also has satellite phone connections so Kim can keep abreast of developments and issue orders, according to state television. It also has a carriage loaded with his Mercedes Benz vehicle,
South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported.
“His private train for sure has a luxurious interior and good-quality facilities, but it also can travel safely in China, with pretty good rail tracks there,” said Ahn Byung-min, a senior analyst at South Korea’s government-funded Korea Transport
Institute. The train can reach speeds of up to 80kph on China’s network, compared with a maximum of about 45 kph on North Korea’s tracks, Ahn said.
While Kim is taking the train to make peace this time, he has in the past used the same train to prepare for war. —