North Korea
Kim Jong-un’s armored train, a James Bond-style castle
To visit Vladimir Putin, the North Korean leader took his safe transport route everywhere in armor. But the weight of the convoy prevents it from traveling above 60 km/h.
Published
In his heavily armored train, Kim Jong-un stopped in Kazan, a hundred kilometers from Vladivostok.
via REUTERS
Slow, luxurious and equipped with equipment worthy of James Bond: Nicknamed the “Walking Castle,” Kim Jong-un’s armored train entered Russia on Tuesday as a privileged mode of transportation ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. North Korean leader.
Like Stalin before them, the Kim dynasty’s heads of state have always avoided air travel as much as possible, which is considered too vulnerable. Kim Jong-un is no exception to the tradition started by his grandfather Kim Il-sung and perpetuated by his father Kim Jong-il. It was by armored train that he traveled to Beijing in 2018 and Hanoi the following year for summits with his US counterpart, Donald Trump. A journey lasting about sixty hours.
In 2001, his father took no less than 24 days to complete the 20,000-kilometer marathon tour from Pyongyang to Moscow. A Russian officer called aboard, Konstantin Pulikovsky, testified that luxury reigned on the train, where lobster and French wines were served.
Floor, walls, windows, everything is armored
According to the official version, it was on his train that Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack in 2011. As a testament to their symbolic importance, the trains used by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, where the remains of the two former leaders lie.
Kim’s train, made in Pyongyang in several nearly identical replicas, is fully armored from the windows to the walls, including the floor, which in principle protects against bullets and explosives. If we are to believe the South Korean Ministry of Unification, its characteristics are not limited to that. According to this source, “It has assault weapons and a helicopter that can be used in an emergency.
The speed is 60 kmph
The other side of the coin: Due to the weight of this equipment, the train cannot exceed 60 kmph. It is true that it offers incomparably higher security conditions than an airplane, where the South Korean ministry notes that “the chances of survival will be significantly reduced” in the event of an attack. It can easily reverse course in the event of an unexpected event and its trajectories are “much more difficult to predict” than an airplane.
To put all the odds on his side, Kim Jong-un is accustomed to deploying players on all routes he takes, as he did during his trip to Hanoi in 2019.
Unlike his father, who had a genuine fear of flying, Kim Jong-un has no reluctance to fly. In 2014 a campaign picture showed him at the controls of a plane. He has previously used the plane for foreign trips three times – twice to China, once to Singapore, and in 2018 for a summit with Donald Trump.
The North Korean president’s office has an official plane called Samme-1. Named after the emblematic bird of North Korea, it is an old Soviet-made Ilyushin-62, which, according to experts, no longer offers all guarantees of reliability.
However, for the 2018 summit, Samma-1 actually flew from Pyongyang to Singapore. But he acted as an impostor, and Kim Jong-un was not on board: the leader took his place on a real-life fake Air China commercial flight. The Boeing 747 took off from Pyongyang as CA122, a regular flight to Beijing. However, on the flight, it changed direction and registration towards Singapore, according to data from Flightradar24 website.
(AFP)
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