Kim Jong Ill narrowly misses being turned into a flaming pile of goo by a train collision and subsequent explosion. Somewhere someone is mighty pissed.
What does it mean when North Korea declares a state of emergency in a city? The entire country is a police state that makes 1940s Russia look tame in comparison.
Sounds like they shut down all other traffic when Kim is traveling by rail so it's not something that would be able to happen to him unfortunately.
Sounds really nasty. Doubt we will ever get a real death toll though. North Korea just does not talk much.
[edited to add]
One part of the article has me pretty confused. They talk of a secret trip to china that he was returning from, then they say that all rail is shut down in his area when he travels (exclusively via rail). How can you go anywhere in secret when you shut down all traffic around you? I would think it would be pretty easy to figure out where and when this guy is going somewhere on the rail and then wait on the tracks...
Couple reasons, one is that without him the sun wouldn't rise in the east and set in the west, so any actual North Koreans would be rather unwilling to kill the guy. The other is that NK is so tightly controlled, slipping in agents who could do the dirty work is difficult in the extreme.
Finally, I'm not sure how easy it would be to tell that rail traffic has been shut down in a particular section of track. I don't know if trains are common enough so that an empty stretch of track would really stand out.
Rail service is intermittent to lack of parts and fuel, as well as travel being heavily controlled, the odds are no one other than the operators of the track would have a clue he was passing through, or even that all traffic has stopped.
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