Ryongchon Railway Accident

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Place of misfortune

The Ryongchŏn railway accident was a serious railway accident on April 22, 2004 at 12:10 p.m. local time (4:10 UTC) in the train station in the North Korean city ​​of Ryongchn . The explosion of a train laden with ammonium nitrate killed at least 161 people, injured around 1,300 and destroyed around 40 percent of the city center.

Ryongchon before misfortune

Ryongchŏn is located 20 km from the North Korean-Chinese border, north of the capital Pyongyang . The P'yŏngŭi Line , which runs through Ryongchŏn, connects the capital with the People's Republic of China . It was built between 1906 and 1940 and is one of North Korea's most important connections to the outside world. Ryongchŏn Station opened in 1939 and the Tasado Line branches off from the station. According to a correspondent report on Deutschlandfunk, it is the most traveled route on the North Korean railroad . North Korea is economically dependent on the freight trains operating on this route. Before the disaster, 26 percent of North Korean train traffic ran through Ryongchon Station. It is especially important for the transport of grain, coal, building materials and fish.

Cause of accident

One day after the accident, the North Korean Foreign Ministry announced that when wagons loaded with dynamite were being maneuvered , they had come into contact with sparks from a defective overhead line and that an explosion had occurred.

Two days after the accident, reported the Chinese news agency Xinhua , citing information of North Korean officials that at the station of the city of Ryongchon on 22 April 2004 around 13:00 local time laden with oil freight train and with the fertilizer ammonium nitrate -laden freight train at Maneuvering collided. An overhead line is said to have fallen down, causing the oil cargo to burn and detonating the ammonium nitrate. A message from the North Korean news agency, the Korean Central News Agency, was similar .

Extent of the accident

According to Xinhua , a total of at least 161 people were killed and about 1,300 injured. 76 school children are said to have been among the fatalities. A week after the disaster, North Korea put the damage at 300 to 400 million euros. 40 percent of the buildings in the city center were destroyed. According to the Red Cross, 1,850 houses were completely destroyed and 6,350 others were partially destroyed within a radius of almost four kilometers.

The train service between Pyongyang and the Chinese border station Dandong was not interrupted.

Relief efforts

On the afternoon of April 23, North Korea asked the world for help for the first time after an industrial disaster.

Two days after the serious train accident, North Korea officially confirmed the events and published the first pictures. China and South Korea had meanwhile provided North Korea with one million US dollars each as emergency aid.

Although North Korea imposed a state of emergency , according to South Korean information , the late and sporadic reporting by North Korean authorities as well as the backward and ailing infrastructure of the country made it difficult to provide medical aid for the injured. Many hospitals in much of the country only have hourly electricity and there is a lack of working ambulances. The international telephone connections in the affected area of ​​the country were also interrupted. Foreign aid was only accepted with a delay. According to an RTL correspondent from Beijing , many injured people were brought to Chinese hospitals because the people in North Korea could not be helped due to scarce resources. On instructions from North Korea, aid deliveries from South Korea had to take the detour by sea in order to prevent South Korean trains from passing through all of North Korea. Foreign aid organizations reported that North Korean authorities had completed the recovery of the dead and injured before foreign aid workers arrived. The authorities did not inform their own population of the accident until days later and only sporadically.

reconstruction

During a visit to the city two months after the accident, Käthi Zellweger from Caritas was able to find “reconstruction work in full swing”. Over 10,000 workers and soldiers are said to have helped with the reconstruction - primarily of housing estates. Most of the cost was borne by South Korea. A hospital director is said to have said that in addition to cuts and eye problems, they also had to deal with psychological impairments.

In July 2005, Mario Schmidt ( ARD studio Tokyo) reported that there was little to remember the disaster. Thanks to foreign donations in particular, the 1,000 homeless families were able to move to other houses after six months. The head of the reconstruction work is said to have said: “54 children died in a primary school and the hospitals were gone. The patients had to be taken to other cities. "

Media speculation

In the first few days there were false reports in the international media. Up to 3,000 deaths were feared. The BBC reported theories that the accident was an attempted assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il , who passed Ryongchon train station about nine hours before the accident. He was on his way back from a state visit to China. However, this theory was denied by the South Korean side.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Seriously injured people wait in vain for help . stern.de of April 27, 2004.
  2. ↑ Train disaster in North Korea Victims were riddled with rubble . SPIEGEL ONLINE from April 25, 2004.
  3. ↑ 朝鮮 総 督府 官 報 (The Official Gazette of the Governor General of Korea), Shōwa No. 3841, November 8, 1939 (Japanese)
  4. ↑ (9+) Secrecy of the Communist Regime: Flames in the Dragon City . Süddeutsche.de of April 23, 2004, updated May 19, 2010, accessed July 9, 2018.
  5. ↑ Train disaster in North Korea: The Ryongchon crater . SPIEGEL ONLINE from April 24, 2004.
  6. ^ North Korea Appeals for Help After Railway Explosion . The New York Times, April 24, 2004.

Coordinates: 39 ° 58 ′ 50 ″  N , 124 ° 27 ′ 31 ″  E