A Rail Journey: North Korea to Russia By Train
Pedestrians move about a small North Korean town in North Hamgyong as seen from the train window. Matt Reichel.
A Fascination with the North Korean Border
Call it a strange passion, but I am obsessed with North Korean border regions. I first visited the area while living in China in 2007, where I drove along a section of the Chinese-North Korean border just to observe life in “the Hermit Kingdom.” I started in Dandong, China’s largest border town across from North Korea’s Sinuiju, and continued by train north to Tumen. There, I hired a taxi and drove along the border to Sanhe, stopping to peer into every North Korean hamlet along the way.
I loved it so much I repeated that trip in 2010 for a university project on North Korean borderlands. This time though I drove the entire border, from Dandong on the Yalu River to Quanhe on the Tumen River where China, North Korea and Russia all meet.
From the Chinese observation deck over the tri-border, you can see the rail bridge linking North Korea with Russia. Completed in 1952 during the Korean War, the rail link is the only land crossing between the two countries. I yearned to cross it.
I’ve since travelled to North Korea more than 40 times.
Presented with a Long-Desired Opportunity
On my last trip in 2019, I was finally presented with the opportunity to take the train from Pyongyang to the Russian city of Ussuriysk outside Vladivostok. Naturally, I couldn’t say no.
I was always interested in making this journey and had tried several times to organize it before. But for one reason or another, be it scheduling, politics, or something in-between, it was always “maybe impossible,” which is North Korean talk for a definitive no. So, when I was finally asked if I wanted to do it, I agreed to the trip as quickly as possible, just in case the authorities decided to change their minds.
The train operates on a limited schedule, departing once every two weeks, with the schedule itself changing every three months or so. These factors make this trip a logistical challenge to organize properly. The North Korean leg of the journey from Pyongyang to Rason is commonly late so you have to leave a buffer day in Rason to guarantee you’ll make the Russian connection.
The first leg of the journey was set to depart from Pyongyang Station at 7:30 am in the morning on a train that would bring me to the Rason Special Economic Zone along the North Korean-Chinese-Russian border in the country’s far northeast.
The journey is scheduled to take around 28 hours, but I was warned to expect significant delays along the way, mainly because I was travelling in February— the middle of winter.
Passengers wait to board a train at Pyongyang Railway Station. Matt Reichel.
I arrived at the station just after 6 am. Two of my North Korean friends had to accompany me on the journey as far as the internal border between mainland North Korea and the Rason Special Economic Zone, two stations away from the final stop. Even for well-connected Pyongyang locals, getting a permit to enter this small, far-flung, heavily Chinese-influenced region is hard to obtain.
As a Canadian, the authorities did not want me making this journey through some of the most sensitive areas of the countryside alone. So, two of my local colleagues were recruited, begrudgingly, to make the trip with me. One of them was my best friend in North Korea, JH. If there’s anyone I’d like to be stuck on a long train ride with it would have been him. To cheer them up, I bought lots of snacks-- Taedonggang beer, and soju.
My friend met me on the platform carrying lunch boxes filled with rice, kimbap, kimchi, and hard-boiled eggs for our trip. He looked tired.
Around us, people were chatting in small social circles of colleagues, friends, and family on the platform, waiting for the train doors to open. The marble floors reflected people’s shadows, making the station feel even more crowded than it actually was. It was a cold February morning, and I kept jumping around and pacing to stay warm. Having spent the last two months in Southeast Asia, I didn’t think to bring warmer clothing.
Train operators came by with keys to physically open the train doors at 7:00 am, allowing passengers to begin loading luggage and boxes of supplies they had prepared to make the journey north. Many people carried boxes and sacks of goods, containing anything from electronics to fruit. These were likely gifts for family members in more remote and undoubtedly more disadvantaged parts of the country. We followed the crowds and piled onto the train to find our carriage.
The carriage felt like it was at least thirty years old, but it was comfortable in a nostalgic, peroshkis and cigarettes kind of way.
Leaving Snowy Pyongyang Station
The train pulled out of the station promptly at 7:30 am. Family members of passengers lined the platform waving goodbye as we slowly chugged out onto the snowy open-air tracks overlooking downtown Pyongyang. Flurries were falling, and it gave the city a gloomy yet strikingly beautiful feel.
JH didn’t bat an eye. Instead, he quickly changed out of his typical North Korean trousers and button-down shirt into a pair of sweatpants and a Jordan hoodie.
He was exhausted from the night before and having to wake up early, so he suggested we take a nap. The journey would be a long one and he was slightly hungover.
After a couple of hours of sleep, we woke up to the desolate, snow-speckled, golden brown countryside of Yangdok glistening outside the window. JH slid the cardboard box with our food supplies out from under the bottom birth. He removed the piece of tape holding it together and took out three Korean plastic lunch boxes he had purchased just this morning.
Like a flimsy bento box, the lunches were compartmentalized, with spaces for kimchi, tiny dried fish, radishes, rice, cooked pollock, and seaweed, and the kits themselves were held together with two small metal staples. JH also lifted three bottles of Taedonggang beer out from the box and asked me to open them. I used my water bottle to pop off the caps, and we cheersed, “Juk bae.”
We stopped at Yangdok station for a while. JH got off the train to have a cigarette on the platform. I tried to follow him a couple of minutes later, but a railway officer stopped me from leaving. They were told about the foreigner on the train and were wary of me moving around outside. We’d have to get smarter to get me off the train at future stops.
The train continued up through Yodok County, a region notorious for its infamous re-education and labour gulags. I was pretty surprised the tracks went through here. Yet again, I should not have been, given that many of these rail lines were constructed during the Japanese occupation between 1885 to 1945. The Soviet-style gulags came later. Still, the tracks only scratched the southernmost part of the country before turning to the east, some 30 kms south of the camp. We made a brief stop in the town of Kowon, a place I had been to several years earlier, I remember being trapped there shovelling snow during a blizzard.
Rural denizens walk past cut corn fields in front of their homes in rural North Pyong’an Province. Matt Reichel.
Pulling into Hamhung
Multi-story buildings began to appear along the tracks, so I knew we were getting closer to Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city and home to JH’s father’s family. His cousin would be meeting us on the platform with some food, as his mother had called ahead to inform them of our arrival. Just as the sun was beginning to set, we pulled into Hamhung Station. As planned, JH’s cousins met our train just as it arrived. JH told me to wait inside as he spoke with his relatives, but after a little while, he motioned for me to come out.
The train attendant was watching my every move. He said something to JH. He was probably not pleased with me getting off the train. “I said you need a cigarette and that if you are with me outside, it’s fine. He won't bother us anymore,” JH told me in Chinese quietly on the platform.
I don’t smoke, but I happily took the cigarette for the fresh air and to go people-watching. JH’s older male cousin gave me a light. I shook hands with his cousins. They smiled, but I could also tell they were slightly nervous. Of course, they knew about me and they would have been told at least very basic details of why JH was passing through town.
Later, back on the train, I asked JH if they knew he’d be with a foreigner. He nodded. “We’ve come here [to Hamhung] together several times before, and this is my father’s town. I’ve seen these relatives each time I come here, so they know. I bring them presents from my family, so they wanted to prepare our dinner.”
In Korea, north or south, family bonds are vital. It would have been seen as shameful for JH to pass through, if only for a couple of hours on a train platform, and not inform his father’s relatives. Likewise, they would have felt awkward for not preparing food, knowing their relative has come from such a long journey. It’s a means of staying connected and close to one another, despite only getting to see each other once every few years.
By the time we left the station, it was dark. JH’s relatives had prepared a big bag of local food for us from Hamhung. JH eagerly opened the bag to find North Korean sealed fish roe, some cold hairy crabs, a can of beef, North Korean branded instant ramen, and homemade kimchi in a small Tupperware. These were North Korean treats. Hairy crabs from the coastal regions are well-loved. JH happily dug into everything, breaking apart the crab legs and squeezing bits of bright red fish roe into his rice.
We spent the rest of the evening chatting. Due to power cuts, there was not much to see outside, except for the occasional fluorescent white light hanging inside one of the housing blocks, brightly illuminated pair of portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, or a granite monument commemorating an event in Korea’s revolutionary history.
We fell asleep to the constant rattling of the train’s old wooden window frame.
Just outside Kilju city in North Hamgyong, pedestrians cross a bridge over a dried-up river bed. Matt Reichel.
24-hours from Pyongyang: Sunrise over Kilju
I woke up to sunrise overlooking the city of Kilju. I peeled the small white curtains off the window to take a better look outside. In the middle of the night, the train had stopped for several hours at Tanchon station. I’m not sure why and the other two seemed oblivious. But by the time morning rolled around, we were making our way through the beautiful mountainous countryside of North Hamgyong province.
North Hamgyong has always been a fascinating province to explore and initially gripped my imagination through the numerous books I’ve read detailing defector accounts from this region. I’ve been able to travel around here before but under relatively strict conditions. Still, it’s possible to see through the cracks when you know what to look for. The provincial capital of Chongjin is also the country’s third most populous city, with just under one million inhabitants. Known for its massive iron and steel smelting complex, Chongjin is an industrial workhorse on the East Sea.
The countryside around Kilju was mesmerizing, like scenes unfolding out of a Socialist storybook. People peddled their bicycles along well-manicured paths, small houses with Korean tiled roofs dotted the countryside, school children played in the fields in their school uniforms and red handkerchiefs, and soldiers in brown and green uniforms stood along the tracks. Smoke seeped out of wooden chimneys neatly placed at the side of every home.
Life looked strangely idyllic, but of course, these well-manicured features of socialist ideals disguised a much more challenging reality. Across North Hamgong, electricity is scarce, and supplies and food are not plentiful. As a result, life in the countryside is full of dangerous politics and struggles, amplified by the lack of essential services.
The train chugged past public bathhouses with people entering and exiting from an unusually shaped blue building. We passed by schools and kindergartens with typical slogans plastered above the gates, thanking the ‘Dear Leaders’, brandishing a commitment to study hard for the fatherland, or encouraging elementary school students by stating, “We have nothing to envy in the world!” in bubbly lettering.
Down some of the alleyways, I was able to see pop-up markets, with middle-aged ladies selling vegetables neatly arranged on the ground or small stall tables. North Hamgyong is a cold and mountainous region, much like the Siberia of Korea, being so removed from the capital. Emperors exiled misbehaved subjects to Hamgyong during the Korean dynasties. Japanese authorities found Hamgyong too difficult for farming, so they built ports and heavy industry instead. The Korean War saw the province almost entirely flattened. These factors continue to plague the region. Rusting and outdated factories coupled with the lack of self-sufficient food production caused people in Hamgyong to suffer greatly during what North Koreans call the Arduous March-- four long years of famine that claimed countless lives in the mid-to-late 1990s. Even now, the region struggles with food security issues.
I reflected on all of this— all these human stories and facts swirling around my head as rural Hamgyong passed by outside the window.
Two men on bicycles pass in front of a blue apartment complex in rural North Hamgyong.
Seeing New Family in Chongjin
We arrived in Chongjin city in the early afternoon about four hours later than scheduled. The city’s highrises and dated industrial factories came quickly into view as the train sped towards the station.
JH was excited, sitting with his hands on his knees, waiting for the train to come to a stop as it glided into Chongjin’s busy Youth Railway Station. We stopped with a thud as the train cars clanged together a few times before finally settling on the platform.
JH’s mother’s family originally comes from nearby, and he would be meeting relatives on the platform he’d never met before. His mother had phoned ahead to inform her sister’s family he would be passing through. He was fascinated. He always knew his mother came from this region, but the last time he was up this far north, he was a young child and too young to remember anything.
A well-dressed younger woman, along with an older man stood waiting on the platform. I watched JH greeted them with a mature smile on his face as if representing his mother. He was, after all, her respectful, all-grown-up progeny paying homage to her homeland after many years removed.
After about 20 minutes, I decided I wanted to go out and take a short walk around the station. Railway attendants and security staff were busy checking people’s ID booklets and travel permits as they piled towards the exit. For locals and foreigners alike, travel in North Korea, even domestically, requires a permission slip if leaving one’s home district.
I walked along the platform’s edge with a lit cigarette dangling from my lips— my only excuse for being outside the train. I let the cigarette slowly burn down, buying more time to watch the hustle and bustle around me. Every once in a while, I would walk back towards JH and his family.
They greeted me briefly in Korean, and I shook hands with them and smiled. They were very curious, but they didn’t dare ask me any questions. Seeing as it was JH’s first time meeting them, I didn’t know how much they knew about his life and I didn’t want to make anything awkward for them.
The train attendants blew their whistles, and JH and I got back on the train. I overheard him telling his family members he would see them later tonight and would phone them again when he arrived back in the city. Because JH could not obtain a permission slip to enter the Rason Special Economic Zone, he would be turned back at the internal border in Huchang, about two hours north of Chongjin.
The train continued along the coastline, passing pine trees and barbed wire fences separating the beaches and ocean from the road. We started to say our goodbyes long before the train arrived in Huchang, not knowing when the next time we’d be able to see each other again. This is the reality of working in North Korea, but that uncertainty makes things feel more special between friends.
People mill about in a village outside of Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province as seen from the train window.
The train stopped in Huchang at a tiny outdoor station in the middle of nowhere. Military guards boarded to check people’s permissions. For JH and his colleague, this was the end of their trip with me. They told the guards they would be getting off, and I helped them with their luggage. “Where will you go now, back to Chongjin?” I asked.
JH replied, “Yes, we will take a local bus back down, and I’ll stay with my relatives for a couple of days. My cousin just had a baby, so I will see the newest member of my family. Then we will take this same train back to Pyongyang.”
I slipped him an extra couple hundred dollars as he got off. I knew their tickets back would not be in these nice sleeper compartments but rather in the cold, unheated section of the train. At least here they had coal heaters keeping the car warm. It was enough to upgrade both of their tickets.
The guards would not let me exit at Huchang. JH said the train would terminate at Rajin station, about 30 minutes away, and a local guide would meet me at the platform and bring me to a hotel for the night.
The train continued once more, but by this point, all of the passengers were busy packing their bags, and the train attendants were coming through to begin the cleaning process. They stripped the beds, collecting all the sheets and pillows for washing. The attendant who kept an eye on me throughout the trip smiled. “10 minutes,” he said slowly and clearly in Korean, just to make sure I understood.
Rajin Station was relatively modern-looking. Unlike the tiny rural one-room stations or the major hustle-and-bustle stations of the big cities, this one felt sleek and very Chinese. Rajin is about a one-hour drive to the Chinese border and about 1.5 hours to the Russian border, making it a unique centre of commerce in this remote northeastern corner of North Korea.
Part of an experiment to attract foreign investment, this region is considered a Special Economic Zone meaning it has its own immigration and internal boundaries. Within the zone, Chinese and Russian businesses operate relatively freely. About one out of every three cars you see on the street have Chinese license plates.
A Stop Over in the Rason Special Economic Zone
A woman met me inside the station. She was dressed formally with a nametag. Let’s call her Ms. Kim.
“Hello, Matthew,” she said. “I have not seen you for many years,” she added.
I looked closely at her again and, all of a sudden realized how familiar she looked. But I could not place her.
Sensing my hesitation, “YPO 2012,” she blurted out. I had disappointed her by not remembering. The damage was already done, so I didn’t pretend to know who she was. “Of course, that was a long time ago, but I do remember your face,” I told her, which was the truth. She had a large, distinctive mole on her upper lip but was otherwise young-looking and very well put together.
Many years had passed since I was last in the Zone, and by the looks of it, things had changed a lot. Chinese-style sidewalks lined the paved streets., LED screens were visible on many of the city’s buildings and restaurants, and the once rustic jangmadang (free market) had moved into a multi-story Chinese-built mall structure.
Ms. Kim asked if I wanted to go anywhere since I had a free afternoon in town.
“The market,” I replied.
Unlike in Pyongyang, where I have to beg and plead to go to the Tongil Street Market to purchase local goods, in Rajin, these places are easily accessible to foreigners and locals alike. Moreover, there are much fewer rules on movement once inside the zone.
Even if it had changed a lot, I still wanted to see what products were being sold and what percentage of goods were domestically produced versus imported. Plus, I was in the market for a new winter hat and North Korean notebooks, and the old ladies in the market hand-make some great ones.
This time around, I noticed a much wider variety of North Korean-made goods, many more than the last time I had visited. I saw everything from packaged noodles to canned meat, and clothing was all made in DPRK. In addition, more DPRK cosmetics brands were on the shelves, and signs proudly displayed that the produce was domestically grown.
I picked up a hat and a few notebooks with the Won I had left over from Pyongyang. Ms. Kim was a bit surprised I already had Won on me. Won is not supposed to be easy for foreigners to obtain outside the Zone, but she stopped short of asking any more questions.
“Do you want to go anywhere else?” She asked.
“How about the port?”
A worried look came across her face. Clearly, that should have been somewhere I should have asked about in advance because it was one of the few places in the zone that require prior permission to visit.
“I don’t think we have any more time for that,” she responded, a typical North Korean facesaving lie told to foreigners who request things they cannot do easily. So instead, she brought me to my hotel to rest for the night. We would continue again the following day, as the Russian train would arrive to pick me and other passengers up and bring us across the rail bridge.
Men get haircuts at a barber shop in Rajin city, Rason Special Economic Zone. Matt Reichel.
Students stand outside their school building in Rajin. Matt Reichel.
Getting Out of North Korea
Ms. Kim was waiting for me in the lobby at 10 am. Unfortunately, the Russian train would not come as far as Rajin station due to track gauge size differences between North Korea and Russia. Instead, we would have to drive an hour and a half to the last station on the North Korean line called Tumangang. The Russian train would pick me up from there.
We first drove to the town of Sonbong for lunch and then continued to Tumangang, winding through rural villages on dirt roads until we reached the station.
Ms. Kim was ushered into a guard post outside the station, where my passport was requested. I handed it over.
As they spoke, Ms. Kim began to look frustrated. She gripped her phone, frantically calling someone. She spoke with the guard once more. He left but returned a few minutes later and gave her back my passport. I was curious as to what the commotion was about, so I asked if everything was alright.
“He said you were missing a stamp that permits you to leave from this border post. He said you should have gotten it in Chongjin, but I explained you took the train from Pyongyang,” she explained, frustrated at the guard. “Everything is okay now,” she continued.
Border officers motioned me to bring my luggage into the concrete station building for inspection. After X-raying my luggage and backpack, one officer opened both up for a careful examination. I was searched down to the pockets of my wallet and my socks.
Then, they got to my camera bag. Having exited North Korea several times before from these northern border posts, I somewhat knew what to expect -- a full electronics search. After all, these are the border posts that arrested some American religious workers with less than permissible content on their hard drives. While customs checks in Pyongyang Airport are cursory, those on the land borders are a whole other game.
A second officer collected all the memory cards from my two cameras and brought them into a back room. He didn’t ask me to but I followed him, leaving the first officer to continue checking my luggage. I knew from experience-- it’s best to be in the electronics room for this kind of inspection.
He plugged one of my camera cards into his card reader on his desktop computer. From there, he spent the next forty minutes carefully reviewing each of the images on my first camera card. He stopped on some of them. “What’s this?” he asked. “Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies campus,” I repeated in Korean. He kept going.
Eventually, he found a couple of images he didn’t like. One was a photo of a street scene in Pyongyang where one of the pedestrians was in a wheelchair. “I will delete this one,” he barked. “Ok,” I consented, without a choice in the matter.
I just wanted to get out of there. I was stressed because this was taking a long time. I felt alone and unconnected. Without JH with me, I did not feel the same layer of protection and confidence.
Thoughts raced through my head: “What if he finds something bad? What if they don’t let me out? Can I call JH on Ms. Kim’s phone? Would she even let me? Probably not. This would have never happened at Pyongyang Airport, why do I always need to take these crazy routes?” I tried not to let my emotions show, as wearing your emotions on your sleeve is a dangerous thing in North Korea.
By this point, the officer realized he had three more cards to review. I thought he would continue with the same slow and steady approach, but he had been so underwhelmed by the first one that he sped through the next couple of cards, scrolling through only the thumbnails.
Finding nothing, he shrugged, almost disappointedly, and handed me back both the cards and my passport.
Ms. Kim had been waiting next to my bags. The officer had finished with his inspection and had already moved on. I walked over to a small desk where a man was stamping passports. I handed mine over. He stamped over my visa and I was officially out of North Korea. I felt a sigh of relief come over my body; I had passed the worst of it.
I stood outside the station with about thirty North Koreans, many of whom looked like labourers and maybe ten Russian port workers. Instead of being loaded onto the train, the North Korean border officials waved everyone into the back of two trucks outside the station. We drove a few kilometres down the tracks where the Russian train was waiting. I found my seat in a six-person sleeper berth, along with one massive Russian man, and three North Koreans.
An iced-over Tumen River below marks the crossing between North Korea and Russia. The pagoda tower in the background is in China. Matt Reichel.
Crossing the Tumen River Bridge to Russia
The train departed unceremoniously. Two North Korean soldiers saluted as we pulled onto the border bridge, the final North Korean station before arriving in Russia. Looking out from the bridge onto the frozen Tumen River below, I imagined the history of this region and all those who have attempted to cross this river. I saw the Chinese monitoring station dressed up as a multi-story pagoda that I had first climbed back in 2007.
The train arrived in the Russian border town of Khassan 10 minutes after leaving Tumangang. Two border and customs officers moved their way down the train collecting everyone’s passports. I pulled out my Canadian passport and handed it over to the female officer while the male officer led a german shepherd around to sniff all the luggage. The check was cursory and took only a few minutes.
I noticed my Russian cabin mate peering over at my Canadian passport. By this point, he knew I was not Russian (if that was not immediately obvious). He tried to speak with me, but I could tell he knew Russian would not get him far with me. Regardless, he pulled out a Baltika 8 (a strong Russian beer) from his bag and a couple of cups.
My North Korean bunkmates stayed quiet while the Russian and I sipped on the Baltica. After about an hour, the female immigration officer returned with a stack of passports all freshly stamped. Welcome to Russia, said nobody.
The Russian countryside looked desolate and sparsely populated. While some of the areas we passed through were forested, the track mostly followed the coastline, passing small Russian villages. All of the Russian workers departed the train at the port town of Slavyanka including my massive cabin mate. We shook hands. I noticed from his passport that he regularly travelled between Russia and North Korea, likely working on the Russian-leased dock at Rajin Port.
The Russian train stopped at Khassan Station, the first stop in Russia. Matt Reichel.
The entry to Khassan Station from the platform. Immigration is inside. Matt Reichel.
Alone with The Taekwondo Instructors
Once the Russians left, the North Koreans became significantly more animated. With the exception of myself, the entire train was North Korean. My cabin mates began to pull out dried fish, bread, and acorn soju from their bags.
I had a dinner box prepared by Ms. Kim from Rajin and a bunch of Chinese biscuits from the market. The Koreans motioned for me to eat with them, and I added what I had to the pile of food and drinks on the small train table. The Russian train car was significantly newer and more modern-looking than the North Korean train I took to Rajin.
They offered me some of the acorn soju, but the intense smell of it made me nauseous so I politely turned them down. One of the men proceeded to accidentally knock the bottle over onto my lap. My pants were soaked with soju as was my backpack. They felt embarrassed and hurried to find a napkin to clean the mess; however, not much could be done.
At this point, they went from being very reserved with me in the cabin to a lot more animated, as if engaging me would make this situation feel less awkward. It worked. I was thrilled they opened up, and I was certainly curious about what they were doing in Russia.
After exchanging pleasantries and some small talk, I had exhausted my Korean language skills. I gathered they were Taekwondo instructors from Pyongyang who taught at different Taekwondo schools in Russia. The North Korean Taekwondo Association has been sending Taekwondo teachers across the world for decades as a way of earning hard currency. Before he was sent to Russia, one of the instructors said he lived for over 10 years in Peru as a teacher.
My face lit up. This whole time we could have been speaking Spanish. I quickly switched languages, and he gladly followed. His Spanish was rusty, but he seemed thrilled to be speaking it, not to mention, his fellow compatriots could not understand a word he was saying.
While I won’t go entirely into full detail on our conversation for his safety, he had been essentially stationed abroad for the last 30 years. He loved living in Peru. He had his own car and apartment, and his family was with him, but Russia was more complicated. His daughter was university-aged now, and his wife and the rest of his family lived in Pyongyang while he taught in Vladivostok and Novosibirsk under extended contracts. He wished his family was with him, and that he was back in Peru.
A North Korean train worker mans the Korean cabin in Ussuriysk, Russia. Matt Reichel.
The North Korean Pyongyang to Moscow train car parked in Khassan. Matt Reichel.
The outside of Ussuriysk Station. Matt Reichel.
68 Hours Later, The Last Stop: Ussuriysk
The train pulled into Ussuriysk Station at around 3 am. This was the last stop, and I’d have to find alternative transportation to Vladivostok. Everyone was ushered off the train and led into a brightly lit yellow waiting room with chairs and sofas. A LED screen with train connections was displayed overhead, and a ticket window was still open on the side.
A large group of North Korean labourers was huddled together in the middle of the room. Their portly, smiley foreman walked up to me. “Do you have a phone?” he asked me in Korean. I had purchased a Russian SIM card flying into Vladivostok a couple of weeks prior, so I did. I handed him my phone. He looked relieved.
I asked what they were doing and where they were going. The foreman mentioned they were forestry workers and they were going to a small town called Tynda some 2,000 kilometres away in Siberia, to work at a North Korea logging camp. I nodded.
I knew about these camps, as they were featured prominently in several Western media reports over the past decade. However, it was still interesting to see a group of people headed there. The workers looked rural with cracked red cheeks and oversized clothing. They spoke with Hamgyong accents. They seemed generally cheery, as if they were on a routine trip with their buds, chatting and smoking cigarettes on the pavement outside the waiting room.
The Taekwondo instructors were waiting patiently for me in the parking lot in front of the station. “How about we share this car to Vladivostok?” the Spanish-speaker asked me. “The driver says 4,000 Rubles.” They spoke Russian well, and I enjoyed their company, so I was happy to split it with them.
They asked if I already had a place to stay in Vladivostok. I had booked a hotel near the airport a couple of weeks earlier, knowing that this train would get in very early in the morning and my connecting flight to Canada was not until the early afternoon.
“Do you think they have more rooms?” the instructor asked.
“Probably,” I replied.
When we pulled up to the hotel we all got out. I gave the driver 4,000 Rubles, and one of the North Koreans handed me 2,000. It was now close to 5 am, but thankfully the lobby attendant was awake and had prepared my key in advance. By this point, I was utterly exhausted and I still reeked of soju.
The North Koreans started talking with her in Russian likely about the room rate. They discussed the situation amongst themselves and decided to walk to another nearby hotel. They said a brief goodbye and left. There was no need to even attempt to exchange contact information. Our meeting was inconsequential according to the State, and no further contact would be permitted anyway. My experience with them was off-the-record. It existed only in its present moment. Thinking back, there’s an almost melancholic beauty to that kind of interaction.
A Final Reflection
After three days of train travel across North Korea and the Russian Far East, I was happy to have a much-needed hot shower, peace and quiet, and a bed all to myself.
Laying down as the dawn light poured into my window, I thought of JH and what he must have been doing. It was special for me to go on this trip with him, to see a side of my closest friend in North Korea for over a decade I was unable to previously see due to the restrictions placed on us.
As he shook hands with his family members on those train platforms, he looked like a diplomat. Not rigid and formal, but respectful and familiar. Watching JH, I saw how he represented a softer, personable and so very human side of North Korea I wish more people could understand. In those moments, I admired him and felt so grateful to have a friend like this in my life.
Here’s to more adventures together, whenever and wherever they may be. But even if they never materialize, for whatever reason, those moments we experienced together, in their present state, were perfect. And that is something to be thankful for.
