http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asThursday, April 22, 2004 Posted: 11:39 AM EDT (1539 GMT) (CNN) -- Two trains carrying flammable materials exploded Thursday in a North Korean train station, leaving a large number of casualties, South Korean media reported. South Korean media quoted witnesses saying the explosion was the result of a collision between the trains at Ryongchon station. Details were not immediately available. Earlier in the day, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had passed through the station on a return trip from China, South Korean news network YTN said. Ryongchon is northwest of the capital Pyongyang and about 50 kilometers south of North Korea's border with China. Yonhap, quoting unidentified sources in the Chinese city of Dandong, said the trains were carrying oil and/or liquefied petroleum gas. The incident happened about 1 p.m. local time, Yonhap said. "The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded," Yonhap quoted witnesses as saying, according to The Associated Press. story.ryongchon.train.map.jpg "Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to Sinuju," a North Korean town on the border with China, AP quoted the agency as saying. North Korean authorities declared a state of alert in the area where the crash occurred, Yonhap reported. The report did not give details but said a type of "state of emergency" had been evoked around Ryongchon They cut off all international phonelines, so details are very slow to come through. Jesus...3000 people?
FOX NEWS version: SEOUL, South Korea — Up to 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday in a horrific train collision and explosion at a station near the Chinese border, just hours after North Korean President Kim Jong Il (search) had passed through the same spot. Almost immediately following the crash of two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum, rumors spread that it might have been a deliberate attempt on Jong’s life. James Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and to China, said he saw a possibility that anti-Jong forces could have done something like this. "They realize the system depends so much on him and the system is so bad and punitive that some people could have just taken the situation into their own hands," he told Fox News. North Korean authorities placed a total news blackout on the crash, according to Chinese news reports, taking such drastic measures as cutting phone lines in and around the town of Ryongchon (search). Hours earlier, the North Korean leader reportedly had passed through the station where the collision happened as he returned from China, South Korea's all-news cable channel, YTN, reported. Kim Jong-Il apparently had a soft spot for Ryongchon, which is about 35 miles from the Chinese border. He often visited the town and its machine-tool factory. The number killed or injured could reach 3,000, YTN said, citing unidentified sources on the Chinese side of the border. "The area around Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded," South Korea's Yonhap news agency 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, the agency said. Yonhap, quoting witnesses in the Chinese city of Dandong on the border with the North, said the explosion occurred about 1 p.m. at Ryongchon. It said Kim passed through nine hours earlier, returning to Pyongyang. Yang Jong-hwa (search), 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. Lilley, the former U.S. ambassador, said an accident of this magnitude would make it impossible for the North Koreans to keep quiet. "I'm sure this kind of thing happens quite frequently in North Korea," Lilley said. "Their infrastructure is deteriorating fast." YTN reported that the causalities included Chinese living in the North Korean border region, and that Chinese in Dandong 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 (search), a bustling industrial city on Yalu River. North Korea's state-run news agency on Thursday 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 Neyshabur, setting off explosions that destroyed five villages. At least 200 people were killed.
The way that the NK country works...I wouldn't be surprised if these numbers are way off just to give it more of a spin in the world view. But, regardless of how many died, it's still sad any time lives are lost regardless(unless your OBL and cohorts who deserve to die). I wonder if, when similar catastrophes(e.g. 9/11) happened here, if they were sympathetic toward us or they were just so far gone or brainwashed that they actually tried to explain it away as we are evil and deserving or something. I'm sure the NK media spinned 9/11 for their own benefit but I wonder how the regular people felt. Are they so far brainwashed against the US that they would see things like this as good if they happened in our country? I don't know which is the reason I ask. I think the US should offer help and aid in this matter. I'm sure they will spin the offer for their own purposes in the media but it should be offered cause this is a human tragedy and is not one to be ignored just because governments are at each other's throats all the damn time. Very sad.
i think we are just as brainwashed then, on a few other forums people are actually pretty happy that this happened, with a few saying that if Lil Kim was on there it'd be even sweeter. i can assure you we'd be more sympathetic if this happened in Japan or Canada. we do measure life on presumed worth, and we (many in the US) don't really percieve north korean or iraqi lives to be worth much, just as some north koreans probably think that US lives arent worth much. we can go and say how bad other countries are but its a two way street, this is a problem in all countries, not just ones outside of ours.
I read an article not too long ago about NK teaching "The Diary of Anne Frank" in schools there and acually spinning it into an anti-American piece of propaganda. That takes balls.
I sometimes question casualty figures, too (Saddam + mass graves of 300,000 people = big maybe). But the fact is that many people must have died and I can't imagine how horrible. Has anyone ever been curious as to what some of these countries are really like? Like NK? Like, say, some of those "stans"? Paki-, Turkmeni-, Uzbeki-, Kazakh-, etc? In some of the latter countries we now have U.S. military bases but we know practically nothing of the countries. In Tashkent (Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan?), they recently had some problem or other with terrorists. But that's about it newswise. They are CUT OFF from the outside world. Hell, they could be Pluto, Mars (OK, I'll say it: Uranus).
150 Said Dead in N. Korea Train Explosion Apr 23, 8:17 AM (ET) By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN DANDONG, China (AP) - The fearsome picture of devastation from the North Korean train explosions near the Chinese border took shape Friday with initial reports saying 150 were killed, 12,249 injured and 1,850 households destroyed. North Korea's government said the explosion occurred when train cars carrying dynamite touched power lines, according to Anne O'Mahony, regional director of the Irish aid agency Concern. "It says 150 people died, including some school children," O'Mahony told Irish radio station RTE by telephone from Pyongyang, the North's capital. Red Cross spokesman John Sparrow in Beijing said the blast had killed at least 54 people and injured 1,249, but that he expected the toll to rise, citing the massive damage. The explosion damaged another 6,350 buildings, Sparrow said, citing information from Red Cross officials in the North. "When you look at the number of buildings destroyed, you have to be afraid of what you're going to find," Sparrow said. "We are anticipating that the casualty figures will increase," Sparrow said, citing figures from Red Cross officials in the North. Initial reports by South Korean media said 3,000 people were killed or hurt in the disaster at a railway station in Ryongchon, a bustling town about 90 miles north of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The secretive North's communist government was silent Friday about the disaster, despite confirmation from the South Korean and Chinese governments. Reports also varied over what exactly exploded. "What they've said is that two carriages of a train carrying dynamite - they were trying to disconnect the carriages and link them up to another train," she said. "They got caught in the overhead electric wiring, the dynamite exploded, and that was the cause of the explosion." Sparrow said the trains were carrying explosives similar to those used in mining. China's Xinhua News Agency reported the blast was blamed on ammonium nitrate - a chemical used in fertilizers - leaking from one train. South Korea's unification minister said the trains were carrying fuel. The blast leveled the train station, a school and apartments within a 500-yard radius, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. It said there were about 500 passengers and railway officials in the station at the time of the blast. North Korean officials invited foreign officials to visit the site of the disaster Saturday, O'Mahony said. Ryongchon is the site of chemical and metalworking plants, and has a reported population of 130,000. Those injured "will be suffering greatly from ... burns and those types of injuries that leave you traumatized," Sparrow said. He said Red Cross workers in the North were distributing tents and blankets to 4,000 families, while the international group was putting together hospital kits containing antibiotics, bandages and anesthetics. Hospitals in China near the border were put on "high alert," Sparrow said. There was no sign in Dandong, the Chinese border city nearest to the crash site, of injured people being brought out of North Korea. But the city's three biggest hospitals were preparing for a possible surge of patients. The city is about 12 miles from Ryongchon. "We're ready to offer our close neighbor our best medical help anytime," said an official at Dandong Chinese Hospital. In Seoul, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said China was urging North Korea to send the injured across the border to hospitals in China. But he said Pyongyang was instead asking China to dispatch relief workers to the scene. China confirmed the first fatalities Friday afternoon, saying two Chinese were killed and 12 others injured in the disaster. The report by its state-run Xinhua News Agency cited the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang. Jeong cited only a "large number" of dead and injured. North Korea declared an emergency in the area while cutting off international telephone connections to prevent crash details from leaking out, Yonhap reported. The chief of the South Korean Red Cross is in North Korea on an unrelated business trip and is to evaluate what kind of aid North Korea might need, Jeong said. The North's official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch that the Red Cross official was greeted Friday by North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam. But KCNA still had not mentioned the disaster by Friday. The international Red Cross plans to launch an international appeal for aid, Sparrow said. The blast reportedly occurred nine hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il passed through the station on his way home from a three-day visit to China. But Jeong said that given the circumstances and the timing of the blast, "I don't think sabotage was involved." At the time of the blast, an international passenger train carrying many ethnic Chinese was parked in the station, South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, without citing sources. The British Broadcasting Corp. showed on its Web site what it said was a satellite photo taken 18 hours after the reported explosion. The black-and-white photo showed huge clouds of black smoke billowing from the site. South Korea's acting president, Goh Kun, ordered his government to prepare assistance if necessary, and the country's Red Cross said it was ready to send food and clothes. Referring to reports of widespread devastation, Goh said at a meeting of his senior staff, "If the report is true, this is a very tragic accident and we relay deep condolences."
