Russian diplomats flee North Korea in hand-powered rail cart

For just over a year, diplomats were unable to leave North Korea after Pyongyang closed its borders due to the coronavirus. Deciding to leave on their own, the group traveled 32 hours by train and another two hours by bus to reach the border between North Korea and Russia.

Then came “the most challenging part” – crossing over to Russia, wrote the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Facebook.

To do this, the group mounted a specially made wooden cart on the tracks, loaded it with their belongings – including their children – and “there they went”, pushing the wagon with their hand for almost a kilometer until it entered Russian territory, the ministry said.

The group of Russians included the third embassy secretary, Vladislav Sorokin, and his 3-year-old daughter, Varya, who was the youngest traveler in the group, the ministry said.

A photograph posted on Facebook by the ministry showed three adults pushing the makeshift cart along the tracks with three children sitting behind large suitcases and boxes, perched on what appears to be a bright red padded bench.

The travelers pushed the cart over a bridge over the Tumannaya River and finally arrived at the Russian border station in Khasan, a settlement in the Far East of the country, where they were met by officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vladivostok.

The regional administration then provided a bus, “which delivered the countrymen … to the airport in Vladivostok” and they left for Moscow on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters on Friday that a diplomatic career “is very difficult and challenging”.

“It can look beautiful and elegant, when, in fact, this career is very hard, intense, a complete ordeal,” he added. “Episodes of this type can also happen sometimes.”

Requests for comment on the Russian diplomats’ trip to the North Korean embassy in Moscow were not granted.

Sorokin, the third secretary, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the border guards who met them in Khasan “had such expressions, as if they saw these carts every day, which is obviously not the case.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian radio station Komsomolskaya Pravda that the route taken by embassy personnel was the most efficient. The alternative would be to travel through China. In that case, however, they would have to be quarantined for three weeks and “the trip would take a month,” she said.

Zakharova said the Foreign Ministry “has appealed to Pyongyang with a request to help our diplomats” several times, but unfortunately, this was not the first time that Russians had to leave North Korea by train, she said.

Anastasia Chernitskaya, press officer at the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, told the Russian state news agency, RIA Novosti, that the tram was made by the RasonConTrans construction joint venture between Russia and North Korea. A company official told the news agency that the wagon was made specifically for the emergency transport of people on the bridge over the Tumannaya River, the news agency said.

The dramatic journey of embassy officials comes at a time when North Korea appears particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, due to the country’s poverty and weak health infrastructure.

The sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council after the most recent nuclear tests in Pyongyang block imports of metal objects and computers, creating barriers to certain medical tools and equipment. The regime’s access to foreign banks is also restricted.

North Korea reported no coronavirus infection, but at the same time asked several European embassies how it could get the vaccines, according to an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal last month.

The country has sent a request to receive the Covid-19 virus from Covax, a global alliance that helps low-income countries obtain vaccines, supported by the World Health Organization, the Journal reported.

Russia and North Korea are longtime allies, and the Kremlin has asked the United Nations to consider easing sanctions.

Alexander Matsegora, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, said on the embassy’s Facebook page earlier this month that “thanks to the strictest bans and restrictions, [North Korea] it turned out to be the only country that did not contract the infection. ”He added that he“ has no doubt ”that, even if a Covid-19 case had been discovered in Pyongyang, the embassy would have been closed.

—Timothy Martin, from Seoul, contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at [email protected]