It is nicknamed the "traveling fortress". The armored train on which Kim Jong Un entered Russia on Tuesday ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the North Korean leader's preferred means of transportation.
Like Stalin before them, the heads of state of the Kim dynasty always avoided as much as possible means of air transport, 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.
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He travelled to Beijing in 2018 and Hanoi the following year for a summit with his US counterpart Donald Trump. A trip that had then lasted about 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 on board, where lobster and French wines were served.
A helicopter that can be used in an emergency
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" in the provinces. 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 rest.
Made in Pyongyang in several almost identical copies, Kim's train is fully armored, from the windows to the walls through the floor, which in principle protects it from bullets and explosives. But its characteristics are not limited to this, according to the South Korean Ministry of Unification. "He has assault weapons and a helicopter that can be used in case of emergency," the source said.
🇰🇵🇷🇺North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who left Pyongyang on Sunday aboard an armored train, arrived in Russia on Tuesday, where he is to discuss "sensitive subjects" with Vladimir Putin in the coming days, according to the Kremlin spokesman quoted by the Russian agency Ria Novosti... pic.twitter.com/5g7kYhh0fh
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) September 12, 2023
The other side of the coin: due to the weight of this equipment, the train cannot exceed 60 km/h. Still, it offers incomparably higher security conditions than an aircraft, where the "chances of survival are considerably reduced" in the event of an attack, notes the South Korean ministry.
It can also easily turn back in case of unforeseen events 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.
Also an official aircraft, the "Chammae-1"
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 device in 2014. He has in the past used the plane three times for trips abroad – twice to go to China, once to Singapore for a summit with Donald Trump, in 2018.
The North Korean presidency has an official aircraft, the "Chammae-1". Named after North Korea's iconic bird, it is an old Soviet-made Ilyushin 62 that, according to specialists, no longer necessarily offers all the guarantees of reliability.
For the 2018 summit, however, the "Chammae-1" had indeed flown from Pyongyang to Singapore. But it had acted as a decoy, Kim Jong Un was not on board: the leader had boarded a true-fake commercial flight of Air China. The Boeing 747 had taken off from Pyongyang under the number CA122, that of a scheduled flight to Beijing. In flight, however, it had changed direction and registration to head for Singapore, according to data from the website Flightradar24.