Slow, luxurious and equipped with equipment worthy of James Bond, the armored train with which Kim Jong-un invaded Russia earlier on Tuesday has been nicknamed the “mobile fortress”. a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the North Korean leader’s preferred mode of transportation.
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Why the train?
Like Stalin before them, the heads of state of the Kim dynasty avoided as much as possible air transport, which was considered too vulnerable.
Kim Jong-un is no exception in a tradition started by his grandfather Kim Il Sung and continued by his father Kim Jong Un.
He traveled by armored train to Beijing in 2018 and to Hanoi the following year for a summit with his American counterpart Donald Trump. A journey that took around sixty hours at the time.
AFP
In 2001, his father needed no less than 24 days to complete a round trip from Pyongyang to Moscow, a marathon of around 20,000 km.
A Russian official invited on board, Konstantin Pulikovsky, had testified that luxury aboard the train served lobster and French wines.
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According to the official version, Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack on board his train in 2011 during a “field visit” to the province.
As evidence of their symbolic importance, the trains used by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Un are on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, where the remains of the two former leaders rest.
Photo KCNA VIA KNS / AFP
Which properties?
Kim’s train was manufactured in Pyongyang in several near-identical examples and is fully armored from the windows to the walls and floor, fundamentally protecting it from bullets and explosives.
But its characteristics are not limited to this, if we are to believe the South Korean Unification Ministry. “It has offensive weapons and a helicopter that can be used in an emergency,” said this source.
AFP
The other side of the coin: Due to the weight of this equipment, the train cannot travel faster than 60 km/h.
The fact is that it offers incomparably higher security conditions than an aircraft, where the “chances of survival in the event of an attack are significantly lower,” notes the South Korean ministry.
It can also easily reverse course in the event of an unforeseen event and its routes are “more difficult to predict” than those of an airplane.
To take advantage of all opportunities on his side, Kim Il Sung is used to deploying soldiers along his routes, as was the case during his trip to Hanoi in 2019.
Does Kim never fly?
Unlike his father, who had a real phobia of flying, Kim Jong-un is not averse to flying. A propaganda film in 2014 even showed him controlling a device.
He has used the plane to travel abroad three times in the past – twice to China, once to Singapore for a summit with Mr Trump in 2018.
AFP
The North Korean presidency has an official aircraft, the Chammae-1. Named after the emblematic bird of North Korea, it is an old Soviet Ilyushin-62, which, according to experts, no longer necessarily offers all the guarantees of reliability.
However, for the 2018 summit, the “Chammae-1” actually flew from Pyongyang to Singapore. But he had acted as a decoy since Kim Jong-un was not on board: the leader had taken his place aboard a real commercial Air China flight.
The Boeing 747 took off from Pyongyang under the number CA122, that of a regular flight to Beijing. However, in flight, it changed direction and registration to head towards Singapore, according to data from the website Flightradar24.