SEOUL, 23 April 2004 — A cataclysmic explosion devastated a North Korean town yesterday. Two trains, carrying liquid petroleum gas and oil collided, creating a fireball that ravaged a local community, killing or injuring up to 3,000 people.
South Korea’s all-news cable channel, YTN reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had passed through the station nine hours earlier as he returned from China. It was not clear what caused the crash, or if it was related to Kim’s journey.
North Korean authorities declared a state of alert in the area where the crash occurred, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. It said a type of “state of emergency” had been imposed around the town of Ryongchon.
In a sign of the accident’s magnitude, the secretive North Korean government cut international phone lines to prevent news of the collision from leaking across its borders, Yonhap said, citing no sources.
The number killed or injured could reach 3,000, YTN reported, citing unidentified sources on the Chinese side of the border.
“The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded,” Yonhap quoted witnesses as saying. “Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to Sinuju,” a North Korean town on the border with China, it said.
Yonhap said the explosion occurred about 1 p.m. at Ryongchon, a town 20 km (12 miles) from the Chinese border. It said Kim passed through hours earlier, returning to Pyongyang. Yang Jong-hwa, a spokeswoman of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said her organization could not immediately confirm the reports. The ministry is in charge of relations with North Korea.
The Defense Ministry likewise was not commenting.
“We are aware of the news reports, but we will not make any comments at this stage,” said a spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
North Korea is one of the world’s most isolated countries and rarely allows outside journalists in. News events within its borders are difficult to independently confirm.
YTN reported that the causalities included Chinese living in the North Korean border region, and that Chinese in Dandong — a bustling industrial city on Yalu River — were desperate to learn about their relatives.
Some of the injured were evacuated to hospitals in Dandong, it said.
Chinese and North Korean traders frequently cross the border at Dandong.
North Korea’s state-run news agency yesterday confirmed that Kim had made a secretive trip to China on Monday through Wednesday, but carried no comments on the reported explosion.
The accident resembled a disaster in Iran on Feb. 18, when runaway train cars carrying fuel and industrial chemicals derailed in the town of Neyshabur, setting off explosions that destroyed five villages. At least 200 people were killed.
