North Korean Rail Disaster

China has confirmed the first fatalities in a North Korean train explosion that is feared to have killed or injured thousands of people.


But Pyongyang has remained silent, despite confirmation from Seoul and Beijing of the blast in the bustling town of Ryongchon on the Chinese border.

The city has a reported population of 130,000 and is known for its chemical and metalwork plants.

China said today that two of its citizens were killed and 12 others injured after two fuel trains collided, knocking down more than 20 houses. At the time, an international passenger train carrying ethnic Chinese was parked in the station, according to media reports in South Korea.


The blast reportedly occurred nine hours after Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, passed through the station on his way home from a three-day visit to China. But the explosion is thought to be an accident rather than sabotage.


North Korea has declared an emergency in the area while cutting off international telephone lines to prevent crash details from leaking out.


In Seoul, the Unification Minister said that China was urging North Korea to send the injured across the border to hospitals in China, but that Pyongyang was instead asking China to dispatch relief workers to the scene.


The chief of the South Korean Red Cross is currently in North Korea on an unrelated business trip and has been ordered to investigate the accident and evaluate what kind of relief North Korea might need.


The Chinese border city of Dandong, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from Ryongchon, said that it was prepared to provide medical and rescue assistance, but a city official said it had not yet received any official aid request.


There was no sign in Dandong of injured people being brought out of North Korea. People interviewed on the street said they hadn't even heard news of the explosion. Newspapers and other state media had no reports on the disaster.


Chinese van drivers who were returning from the North Korean side of the border said the explosion wasn't being reported there.

North Korea seeks help over massive rail disaster
By Christopher Bodeen, AP
23 April 2004


North Korean authorities today accepted United Nations help to cope with the aftermath of yesterday's rail disaster, finally making at least a limited admission that it took place.

United Nations relief agencies have been given permission to travel to the site of the explosion for an "evaluation mission", said a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The UN children's agency is planning to take medicines and first-aid supplies to the region.

Casualty figures may be lower than originally feared. The international Red Cross in Beijing said that at least 54 people died and 1,249 were injured when two trains carrying explosives collided in the bustling town of Ryongchon, causing widespread devastation. Although the toll is still expected to rise, initial reports had said as many as 3,000 people were killed or hurt.

The explosion leveled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500-meter (yard) radius, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. There were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the blast, it said.

Ryongchon has a reported population of 130,000 and is known for its chemical and metalwork plants.

An international Red Cross official said that the two trains that collided triggering the massive blast were carrying explosives similar to those used in mining and not fuel.

But there have even been various reports of what the trains were carrying. China's official Xinhua news agency said it was caused by the leaking of ammonium nitrate in one of the trains. Ammonium nitrate is used in some explosives, as a fertilizer, and in rocket fuel.

North Korea has remained silent on the disaster, despite confirmation of Thursday afternoon's blast in the bustling town of Ryongchon by the governments in Seoul and Beijing.

North Korea declared an emergency in the area while cutting off international telephone lines to prevent crash details from leaking out, the South's Yonhap agency reported. The North's official KCNA news agency still had not mentioned the disaster, a full day later.