More Than 100 Reported Dead in North Korean Rail Blast

When rail cars loaded with explosives blew up this week in North Korea, the disaster killed more than 100 people and injured 1,249, aid groups said Friday, giving numbers sharply lower than initial reports.

The new figures came as the North Korean government finally acknowledged the Thursday accident and formally requested international assistance.

Aid groups said the numbers probably would rise as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, though initial South Korean media reports of 3,000 casualties appeared to have been an exaggeration.

The Red Cross, citing North Korean data, added that 1,850 houses and 12 public buildings were leveled and more than 6,000 houses heavily damaged by the blast’s shockwave.

The North Korean government confirmed the accident in a briefing Friday afternoon for the diplomatic and international aid community, according to those who attended.

The regime said the blast was not caused by a collision, as previously reported, but occurred when two explosives-laden freight cars in a railway siding area accidentally hit a high-tension power line that detonated the cargo, Swedish Ambassador Paul Beijer told CNN.

Descriptions of the explosive material differed. Aid groups said it was gunpowder.

But a report today from the North’s official KCNA news agency blamed “electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and tank wagons.” Ammonium nitrate can also be used as an explosive.

North Korea reportedly denied that a passenger train was involved, and added that the explosives were intended for a nearby water project.

An official with access to satellite intelligence data, however, said it appeared that two trains were involved.

Rail cars had been bottled up in the area because a train carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had passed through nine hours earlier.

“It was unusually congested,” he said. “This is a dictatorial state. Traffic is stopped for days when the ‘great leader’ passes.”

Other reports said the train cars were carrying liquefied petroleum gas, petroleum and dynamite, while the official New China News Agency blamed a freight car leakage of ammonium nitrate.

The Red Cross said North Korea’s delay in acknowledging the explosion fit a pattern. When cyclones slammed into the country’s east coast in 2002, the government waited 24 hours before allowing a site assessment.

Analysts said government officials probably used the one-day delay in acknowledging the train explosion to consider possible domestic and foreign implications in a country where political control is paramount.

Several events in North Korea over recent years, including rail collisions, explosions and a chemical factory conflagration, were never officially disclosed to the outside world.

On Friday, China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, urged nations to respond to North Korea’s rare overture.

“This is unusual” for North Korea, he said, according to Associated Press. “So I think that the international community should be forthcoming, be positive in responding to their request.”

Satellite images posted on websites and broadcast on various networks showed the accident site shrouded in black smoke.

A more complete account is not likely until an international assessment team reaches the scene early this afternoon, said Alistair Henley, head of the Red Cross’s regional East Asia delegation.

The group, including representatives of U.N. agencies and other relief organizations, was scheduled to leave the capital, Pyongyang, at 9 a.m. for the four-hour drive.

The government restricts the movements of foreigners, and some aid groups said the fact that the team was being allowed to visit the site -- something that would not have happened five years ago -- reflected a gradual opening in the regime’s thinking.

A doctor, nurse, two water and sanitation experts and the acting head of the delegation make up the Red Cross portion of the team, Henley said, adding that he expected the convoy to include at least eight vehicles carrying experts with medical supplies.

Some aid was reportedly already getting through from U.N. warehouses in the area.

The Red Cross has not received any indication that North Korea would ask to send the injured to hospitals in the neighboring Chinese border town of Dandong, despite Chinese offers to help.

“China is saying to send the victims to China for treatment,” South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se Hyun in Seoul told reporters Friday. “But North Korea, we think, is telling the Chinese doctors and nurses instead to come to the site.”

Aid organizations said North Korea has indicated it prefers that rescue and relief efforts be handled internally.

Pyongyang has tended to handle disasters this way in order to save face.

“It’s odd. Nobody has come to China for treatment in Dandong,” said a Chinese trader living in the town, who asked not to be named because she makes frequent trips to North Korea. “I guess they won’t let them out.”

The North’s rail system, like many other parts of the impoverished and isolated country, is in poor condition.

“The rail lines are all very weak and worn throughout North Korea,” said Hong Song Kuk, an infrastructure expert at the South’s Unification Ministry. “The same is true of the engines, the passenger cars and all other facilities. Everything is worn out.”

In relative terms, however, the equipment used near the Chinese border is pretty good, said a North Korean defector from the neighboring town of Sinuiju who requested anonymity.

“It’s true the rails were originally laid by the Japanese,” he said. “But they’ve been renovated. These are express trains.”

But the rail lines around Ryongchon are very congested, he added, and there is a large factory called Pukchong Machine in the area.

“This is a very busy area,” he said. “A lot of traffic comes through.”

Magnier reported from Beijing and Demick from Seoul. Jinna Park in The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.