Breaking news from the Sino-Korean border:
SEOUL, South Korea - As many as 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station near the Chinese border, South Korean media reported.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, reportedly had passed through the station as he returned from China hours earlier, South Korea’s all-news cable channel, YTN, reported.
The number killed or injured could reach 3,000, YTN said, citing unidentified sources on the Chinese side of the border.
“The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted witnesses as saying. “Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to Sinuju,” a North Korean town on the border with China, the agency said.
This sounds terrible. Prayers go out to the victims and their loved ones.
More on this later as the news comes in.
UPDATE: The Dong-A (Korean) has some rumors — no, not so much of the attempted assassination kind, but more of the potential death toll kind. One defector from Ryongcheon said there a lot of apartment blocks near the station and was quite worried that the casualty figures might be higher than imagined. Another problem is that there’s only a small platoon — perhaps 30 men — of security troops in the town, and since it’s common practice for the North Koreans to first send in the military to secure major disaster sites, the response to the disaster may have been late. Apparently, there are rumors going around the Chinese border town of Dandong that international phone service from North Korea has been cut off in order to prevent further news of the incident from getting out. There may have also been a number of Chinese residing in the disaster area. There are also some raising the possibility of a terrorist attack, given that Kim Jong-il has visited the nearby Bukjung Machine Tools Factory in the past, but that sounds like a lot of horse crap.
UPDATE II: Further updates can be found here.
7 Comments
Brian,
9 hours before the (catastrophical?)accident or “incident” (coup trial?) the fat cat Kim has passed the rail station with his armored train on his way back to North Korea. So, the “bright sun of mankind” is back in town and has headaches (because of the consumed Henessey cognac on his Beijing vacation, not of the possibly 3000 victims he didn’t give a rat’s ass about). Kim is sitting comfortably in his Pyongyang palace, people are still starving & dying in the rest of the country and the deadly distaster in Ryongchon is only the latest cream on top of the whole mess. If God or whatsoever wouldn’t have turned a blind eye on this darkest place on earth, Kim’s fat butt had go bust 9 hours eralier und we all would celebrate the fattest party, that would put any kid’s orgy during Spring Break in Florida into shame.
Gack, I’m hearing people calling this ’suspicious.’ Just because el supremo passed through there, what was it, 9 hours earlier?
It’s a tragedy, horrific. But suspicious? *sigh*
Well, as of this morning, I’ve heard what is probably the most plausible reason for this terrible collision– apparently, when Kim Jong-il travels, several hours worth of train traffic in either direction is halted, so as to prevent assassination attempts (I suppose). Thus, the traffic patterns may very well have been disrupted by Kim Jong-il using that line and therefore this catastrophic accident.
How does this accident affect N. Korea’s rail net?
They get most of their energy from China via train(probably where at least one of these trains originated). If this blocks distribution, things could get desperate.
Wild theory…
I wonder if this is somekind of coup attempt.
I mean, all communication going outside of North Korea is now turned off. Dear Leader is not in North Korea to know what is going on.
The town that was levelled is direct railroad connection between Pyongyang and Beijing.
This may be an attempt for coup planners to force Kim Jong Il to take other, perhaps remote, route to go back to North Korea. So they could deal him quietly.
Anyway, interesting and possible theory.
Henry Kissinger was on Fox News earlier, and he mentioned that, even though the official North Korean sources said Kim had passed through the station nine hours earlier, there’s no guarantee of that. He seemed rather skeptical about the timing, overall.
One more funny thing - Kim was supposed to go visit the Chinese cities of Shenyang or Dalian to look at their economies, but he went straight home. Which means, overall, that he would have originally gone through Ryongchon some time Thursday afternoon, instead of early morning.
The original 3,000 killed in the accident estimate has come down drastically to less than 300 today, April 25, with Red Cross and foreign diplomats already at the site of the disaster.
PING:
TITLE: Train Collision in North Korea
BLOG NAME: Barry Talks!
CNN : Two trains carrying flammable materials exploded Thursday in a North Korean train station, leaving a large number of casualties, South Korean media reported.
PING:
TITLE: Explosion in North Korea
BLOG NAME: Xor: The Musings of Martey Dodoo
Having finished today’s classes (5 hours!), I settled down in front of my computer, and began to read the New York Times, as I am wont to do. I immediately jumped up again as I read this article: The cable television network YTN estimated that up to 3,…
PING:
TITLE: Speculation As Thick As Smoke In NK
BLOG NAME: Kamelian X-Rays
Speculation continues to swirl around reports of an explosion caused by a train wreck at Ryongchon, North Korea. The trains, laden with fuel, collided at a train station where Kim Jong-il had passed barely nine hours before. A confusing melange
PING:
TITLE: Trains and secrets
BLOG NAME: Simon World
3000 people dead or injured. We think. The North Koreans haven’t said anything about the world’s worst train disaster, ever. If media reports are true, this could be more dead than 9/11. The only information so far has only come via China’s Foreign Aff…
PING:
TITLE: Update on North Korean explosion
BLOG NAME: Hobson’s Choice
My expectations in this episode are not playing out. I had anticipated that weeks would go by with the government in Pyongyang refusing to acknowledge the explosion; in fact, it has called for international assistance (the KCNA does not mention…
PING:
TITLE: Explosion in North Korea
BLOG NAME: Xor: The Musings of Martey Dodoo
Having finished today’s classes (5 hours!), I settled down in front of my computer, and began to read the New York Times, as I am wont to do. I immediately jumped up again as I read this article: The cable television network YTN estimated that up to 3,…
PING:
TITLE: Update on North Korean explosion
BLOG NAME: Hobson’s Choice
My expectations in this episode are not playing out. I had anticipated that weeks would go by with the government in Pyongyang refusing to acknowledge the explosion; in fact, it has called for international assistance (the KCNA does not mention…