Russian diplomats flee North Korea by hand-driven railway

For just over a year, diplomats could not leave North Korea after Pyongyang sealed its borders due to the coronavirus. When they decided to leave on their own, the group traveled 32 hours by train and another two hours by bus to reach the North Korean-Russian border.

Then came ‘the most challenging part’ – across Russia, the Foreign Ministry wrote on Facebook.

To do this, the group mounted a specially made wooden cart on railway lines, loaded it with their belongings – including their children – and ‘left’ and pushed the train car by hand for almost a kilometer until it entered Russian territory. said the ministry.

The group of Russians included the third secretary of the embassy, ​​Vladislav Sorokin, and his 3-year-old daughter Varya, who was the group’s youngest traveler.

A photo posted by the ministry on Facebook showed three adults pushing the makeshift wagon along the tracks with three children sitting behind large suitcases and boxes on a bright red stuffed couch.

The travelers pushed the wagon over a bridge over the Tumannaya River and eventually arrived at the Russian border station in Khasan, a settlement in the Far East of the country, where Foreign Ministry officials met in Vladivostok.

The regional administration then provided a bus, “which delivered the compatriots … to Vladivostok airport” and they left for Moscow on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that a diplomatic career was “very difficult and challenging”.

“It can look beautiful and elegant, if this career is actually very tough, intense, a complete ordeal,” he added. “Such an episode can sometimes occur as well.”

Calls for comment on the trip of Russian diplomats to the North Korean embassy in Moscow went unanswered.

Mr. Sorokin, the third secretary, told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the border guards they met in Khasan “had such expressions as if they were seeing these wagons every day, which of course is not the case.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station that the route followed by embassy staff was the most efficient. The alternative is to travel through China. In that case, however, they would have to go into quarantine for three weeks and ‘the trip would take a month’, she said.

Me. Zakharova said the Foreign Ministry had “turned to Pyongyang several times with a request to help our diplomats”, but this was unfortunately not the first time that it was necessary for Russian citizens to take North Korea by rail. do not leave.

Anastasia Chernitskaya, press attaché of the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the trolley was made by the RasonConTrans construction joint venture between Russia and North Korea. A company representative told the news agency that the railway car was made specifically for the emergency transport of people across the bridge over the Tumannaya River, the news agency reported.

The dramatic journey of the embassy employees comes because North Korea seems particularly vulnerable to the pandemic due to the country’s poverty and poor health care infrastructure.

Sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council following the latest nuclear tests in Pyongyang include the importation of metal objects and computers, which create barriers to certain medical tools and equipment. The regime’s access to foreign banks is also restricted.

North Korea has not reported any coronavirus infections, but at the same time has asked several European embassies how it can get the vaccines, according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal last month.

The Journal reported that the country has submitted an application to receive the Covid-19 virus survey from the Covax supported by the World Health Organization.

Russia and North Korea have been allies for years, and the Kremlin has called on the United Nations to ease sanctions.

Alexander Matsegora, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, said earlier this month on the embassy’s Facebook page that “thanks to the strictest bans and restrictions, [North Korea] seems to be the only country that did not get the infection. He added that he “had no doubt” that if even one Covid-19 case had been discovered in Pyongyang, the embassy would have been closed.

—Timothy Martin in Seoul contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons by [email protected]