When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rolled into the Vietnamese border station of Dong Dang early on Tuesday, his vaunted specialized train was pulled by a red-and-yellow locomotive emblazoned with China
HANOI (Reuters) — When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rolled into the Vietnamese border station of Dong Dang early on Tuesday, his vaunted specialized train was pulled by a red-and-yellow locomotive emblazoned with China’s national railway logo.
It was the second time Kim had arrived for a summit with U. S. President Donald Trump in transport provided by the Chinese, underscoring just how much the young leader’s sudden flurry of international engagements has depended on his larger, more powerful neighbor.
When Kim arrived in Singapore last year for his first, historic summit with Trump, it was in an Air China jumbo jet bearing the Chinese flag.
With the exception of two summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the border between the two Koreas, every one of Kim’s unprecedented summits with China’s Xi Jinping and now the second summit with Trump have depended on trains provided by the Chinese.
“This is a full service from Xi,” said Nam Sung-wook a former South Korean intelligence official. “Kim couldn’t travel without China’s special treatment.”
To travel to his four summits with Xi, Kim’s specially equipped string of train carriages has usually been hauled by matching green DF11Z locomotives, Chinese-made engines sporting the emblem of the state-owned China Railway Corporation, with at least three different serial registration numbers, according to a review of media images.
At the time of his first trip to Beijing in March 2018, South Korean media reported that the locomotives were usually used for carrying top Chinese officials, and were connected to Kim’s carriages in the city of Dandong, on the Chinese side of its border with North Korea.
