The Wreck of the Tribute Train
Several of you have written in or commented on the reports of a train carrying tribute for Kim Jong Eun derailing between Sinuiju and Pyongyang, North Korea, along with speculation that sabotage caused the derailment. Several newspapers in the U.S. and South Korea pick up the story, but they all attribute it to this one, from Open News:
A source in the defense department in North Pyongan province reported on the 23rd that, “The defense department was notified of an incident in which a freight train which left Sinuiju on the 11th was derailed somewhere between Yoemju and Dongrim.”
Eight of the more than forty carriages of the train which was packed with gifts for the successor Kim Jong-eun’s birthday on January 8th were derailed, said the source. For this reason the authorities have launched a full investigation into whether the cause of the incident could be related to forces opposed to the succession.
The source reported that “North Korean rail tracks and sleepers are so old that it’s possible the sleepers were rotting or that nails securing the tracks were dislodged. But in this case the extent of the damage to the tracks and the incident’s timing suggest that the damage was deliberate. The possibility that it was undertaken by someone opposed to the succession is high.” [….]
“I’m not sure exactly,” said the source when asked what the train’s likely contents were, “but probably a large amount of luxury goods like watches and TVs.”
The Korea Times adds a layer of embellishment with a headline that says the train was “derailed by protesters.” The speculation of Open News’s source also loses all of its qualifiers, like “I’m not sure,” and “probably.” Ditto the Joongang Ilbo.
If this was in fact an act of sabotage, it’s likely that it was an inside job. More consequentially, it would suggest that internal opposition is suddenly capable of bold and effective action. This is the sort of stuff that makes for great rumor-mongering within closed societies. As disinformation, it would be sheer genius. And now, let me suggest any number of reasons why it probably wasn’t sabotage at all.
First, we don’t know if any of this is even true.
Second, we’ve seen little other evidence that an internal opposition is capable of anything more than taking clandestine footage or leafleting. This would represent a great leap in sophistication and brazenness.
Third, even if the tracks were deliberately damaged, the “saboteur” may have been doing nothing more subversive than hunting for scrap metal, or wrecking a train to loot it. It seems very “lucky” that the derailment affected a tribute train as opposed to an ordinary passenger or freight train, until you consider that these special trains typically run faster than regular trains, and are thus more likely to topple off the tracks.
Finally, North Korea’s tracks are in such a decrepit state that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one — that most likely, this was an accidental derailment due to bad track maintenance and excessive speed, an especially telling thing for the main line between Pyongyang and Sinuiju. In a society where the security forces are taught to be paranoid, I can understand why sabotage would be considered and discussed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the regime dislocate the local population for the barest suspicion of sabotage. I just don’t have enough solid reporting here to conclude what happened here. That’s not an uncommon occurrence with reporting from North Korea, which means that we must then ask ourselves if the report in question is consistent with others or is an outlier. This one is clearly an outlier, and would be so consequential if true that it invokes the rule that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.