The reclusive North Korean leader rarely travels abroad, but this is his favorite mode of transport when he does. Kim Jong Un has reportedly arrived in Russia after traveling from Pyongyang on his luxury armored train for a summit with President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok. By a long-standing tradition, he spent 20 hours traveling 1,180km (733 miles) on the slow-moving green-and-yellow train.
The train is said to have conference rooms, audience chambers, and bedrooms. According to a 2009 report from the conservative South Korean paper Chosun Ilbo, it features satellite phone connections and flat-screen televisions. It also has a restaurant with fresh lobster and pork barbecue dishes. A former Russian official, Konstantin Pulikovsky, who traveled aboard the train with Kim Jong Il on a trip to Moscow in 2001, described its opulence in his memoir Orient Express. He wrote that passengers could order any dish from a Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and French cuisine menu. Live lobsters were transported to the train, and cases of red wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy were flown in. Young women singers kept guests entertained.
But international sanctions have since slowed communications within the country to a trickle, and information about the train is scant. A recent report from NK News noted that the 90-coach bulletproof train, believed to be of Soviet design with heavy modifications, has a top speed of just 37mph. This is probably because every carriage on the train is bulletproof, which adds up to a massive weight burden compared with regular trains that can reach 200km/h speeds.
The sluggish pace of the train might be due to its heavy armor, but it is also likely that North Korea’s sometimes archaic rail system plays a role. A 2004 accident in Ryongchon, near the border with China, saw more than 160 people killed after two trains carrying combustible materials collided and exploded. The accident was blamed on an electrical fault, though a report from Russian diplomat Georgy Toloraya in 2019 claimed that faulty equipment was to blame.
While the train symbolizes the regime’s isolation and alleged squalor, it might be one of the only ways a North Korean leader can travel in peace and privacy. The country’s airspace is restricted, and its leaders have been known to fear flying. The last time the North Korean leader was seen on a plane was in 2019, when he traveled to Vietnam for a meeting with Donald Trump.
