Slow, luxurious and equipped with devices worthy of James Bond: nicknamed the “walking fortress”, the armored train on which Kim Jong-un entered Russia this Tuesday, September 12 before a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the means of privileged transport of the North Korean leader.
Why the train?
Like Stalin before them, the heads of state of the Kim dynasty have always avoided means of air transport as much as possible, considered too vulnerable. Kim Jong-un is no exception to a tradition started by his grandfather Kim Il-sung and perpetuated by his father Kim Jong-il. It was by armored train that he traveled to Beijing in 2018 and to Hanoi the following year for a summit with his American counterpart Donald Trump. A journey which had then lasted around sixty hours. In 2001, it took his father no less than 24 days to complete a round trip from Pyongyang to Moscow, a marathon of some 20,000 km.
A Russian official who had been invited on board, Konstantin Pulikovsky, had testified to the luxury reigning on board the train, where lobster and French wines were served. According to the official version, it was on board his train that Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack in 2011, during a “field visit” to the province. As proof of their symbolic importance, the trains used by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, where the remains of the two former leaders lie.
What characteristics?
Made in Pyongyang in several almost identical copies, Kim’s train is fully armored, from the windows to the walls including the floor, which in principle protects it from bullets and explosives. But its characteristics are not limited to that, if we are to believe the South Korean Ministry of Unification. “It has assault weapons and a helicopter that can be used in an emergency,” according to this source. The other side of the coin: due to the weight of this equipment, the train cannot exceed 60 km/h.
The fact remains that it offers incomparably higher security conditions than a plane, where the “chances of survival are considerably reduced” in the event of an attack, notes the South Korean ministry. It can also easily reverse course in the event of an unforeseen event and its routes are “more difficult to predict” than those of an airplane. To put all the chances on his side, Kim Jong Un is used to deploying soldiers all along the routes he takes, as was the case during his trip to Hanoi in 2019.
Does Kim never fly?
Unlike his father, who had a real phobia of flying, Kim Jong-un is not averse to flying. A propaganda film even showed him at the controls of a plane in 2014. He has previously used the plane three times for trips abroad – twice to China, once to in Singapore for a summit with Donald Trump in 2018.
The North Korean presidency has an official plane, the “Chammae-1”. Named after the emblematic bird of North Korea, it is an old Soviet-made Ilyushin-62 which, according to specialists, no longer necessarily offers all the guarantees of reliability. For the 2018 summit, however, the “Chammae-1” did indeed fly from Pyongyang to Singapore. But he had acted as a decoy, Kim Jong Un not being on board: the leader had taken his place on board a real-false Air China commercial flight.
The Boeing 747 took off from Pyongyang under the number CA122, that of a regular flight to Beijing. In flight, however, it changed direction and registration to head towards Singapore, according to data from the Flightradar24 website.