Kim’s retro rail journey part of PR

EPA-EFE African News Agency (ANA)

In the last year an increasingly bloody crackdown on insurgents in Indian-ruled Kashmir has escalated tension in the troubled region.

Pakistan has outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammed and seized its properties in south Punjab’s Bawahalpur.

India has demanded that Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, Azhar Masood, be listed as a terrorist by the UN, but has been stymied by China.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned Tuesday’s incursion, saying New Delhi had “endangered” peace in the region for political gains. | AP ANA FOR his second summit with US President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un opted to go retro – riding the rails like his grandfather decades before.

Kim’s decision to take the train all the way across China was probably prompted at least in part by security considerations: his train is built like a tank and almost as slow. But it also marks a major attempt at showmanship designed to bring back memories of North Korean “eternal president” Kim Il Sung’s many travels by railroad.

Kim Jong Un’s journey from Pyongyang to the Vietnamese border town of Dong Dang took more than two and a half days. That’s longer than it took Trump to fly halfway around the world, even with Air Force One stopping for fuel along the way.

But the overland passage was a marked upgrade in optics from Kim’s first summit with Trump, in Singapore last June. For that trip, Kim travelled aboard an American-made Air China Boeing 747.

This time around, when Kim stepped down early Tuesday from his yellow-trimmed train, he was greeted with a bouquet of flowers on a red carpet lined with a Vietnamese honour guard and the five-pointed communist-starred flags of North Korea and Vietnam. He then switched to a black limousine for the final drive to Hanoi.

North Koreans grow up seeing images of Kim’s grandfather travelling by train, which he took to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, among other places, including Vietnam in 1964. A mock-up of a car from the train is on permanent display at the mausoleum where Kim Il Sung and his son, late leader Kim Jong Il, lie in state, along with maps that light up to show the routes he took on his travels.

Inside the car is a desk used by the leaders, along with chairs and a sofa. Guides explain that the carriage was used as a mobile office – proof that the leaders worked tirelessly for the people.

Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father, was known to have hated flying. He is said to have fitted his train out for lavish parties and karaoke sessions.

Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret for security reasons. | AP African News Agency (ANA)