Russian diplomats forced to leave N Korea on a rail cart
EIGHT employees at the Russian embassy in Pyongyang found themselves facing a hellish journey back home this week, eventually spending more than 34 hours in transit and finishing on a hand-operated rail cart a kilometre across the border.
The legitimate trip is especially difficult at present due to Covid-19 measures, which have seen North Korea close its borders and cut off almost all travel in and out of the country.
The Russian foreign ministry posted two photos of the group crossing a wintery landscape and a video of the final stretch of the journey in the rail cart.
The trolley is piled with luggage and the passengers whoop with delight as they cross the rail bridge over the Tumen River, which divides the two countries. The video said the main “engine” of the cart was Vladislav Sorokin, the third secretary of the embassy, and the youngest traveller was his three-year-old daughter, Varya. The diplomats had to push the vehicle for more than a kilometre, it added.
The diplomats’ passage involved a 32-hour train ride, followed by a twohour bus journey to reach the border, which they then had to cross on foot using the trolley to transport their luggage and children.
The journey was the only way the Russians could leave the reclusive nation, which sealed its borders last year to keep Covid-19 at bay and stop the virus from causing the collapse of its crumbling health system.
Flights operated from Vladivostok in eastern Russia by Air Koryo, North Korea’s state-owned airline, have been suspended for some time.
Ministry officials greeted them at a border station on the Russian side, where they then travelled by bus to Vladivostok airport. State-run media in Moscow said that the diplomats were now flying to the Russian capital.
Meanwhile, there are reports of food shortages and deteriorating living conditions inside North Korea as its economy edges closer to the brink of collapse than it has been in decades.
Diplomats and aid workers have also faced even heavier restrictions on their freedom of movement, at times confined to their embassies and having to negotiate for weeks to allow them to leave the country. In May, the UK temporarily closed its embassy because “restrictions on entry to the country have made it impossible to rotate our staff and sustain the operation of the embassy,” the UK Foreign Office said.