For his first known trip outside North Korea in almost four years, Kim Jong Un has probably returned to a favored mode of transport: a luxuriously decorated, heavily armored and exceptionally slow-moving train.
South Korean media reported Monday, citing government officials, that Kim’s train appeared to have left the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, to start its long journey. Russian state media later confirmed that Kim would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia in the “coming days.”
The train’s final destination remains unclear, amid speculation about potential meetings at the port city of Vladivostok or the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s spaceport — both in the country’s far east, hundreds of miles from the North Korean border.
Kim has rarely traveled outside North Korea since assuming the leadership of the country after the death of his father Kim Jong Il in 2011, and North Korea largely cut itself off from the wider world during the coronavirus pandemic. Memorably, when Russian diplomats finally left locked-down North Korea in 2021, they used a railroad cart to cross the border.
Like his father, who was reportedly scared of flying, and his grandfather — Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea — Kim has predominantly traveled internationally in a specially manufactured train, an unusual mode of transport for a 21st-century world leader.
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However, for a high-profile diplomatic summit with President Donald Trump in 2018 he used a Boeing 747 operated by Air China. He used a North Korean airplane to make the relatively short trip to the Chinese city of Dalian in 2018 for his second meeting with President Xi Jinping.
U.S. officials had initially said that Kim was likely to meet Putin in Vladivostok, more than 300 miles from the North Korean border. They are expected to discuss potential arms shipments that could aid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Putin announced plans to visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome — Russia’s main spaceport since 2016 — leading to speculation that the meeting could take place there, more than 900 miles further on from Vladivostok. The famed Trans-Siberian Railroad line passes through the nearby town of Belogorsk.
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