SEOUL, South Korea - As many as 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station near the Chinese border, South Korean media reported.
It is not 3000 killed as you state in your heading for this thread. I would say there are a lot more injured rather than dead.
Interesting to note the crap journalism in the report on Yahoo. They say the North Korean leader passed through nine(9)hours earlier, so what, that has nothing to do with the incident in hand has it, also they go back on their headline saying "The number killed or injured could reach 3,000" emphasis being on the word 'could'.
Terrible incident I agree but really poor journalism to boot.
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Private Flying Forum Moderator. paul@pprune.com
True, BRL , but it's probably also fair to point out that there appears to be a comms blackout in the region - according to the Beeb they have taken all phone lines down in the area to try and stop further news getting out. Maybe some inaccuracy is par for the course in that case.
Er...actually, the presence of the North Korean leader might have had everything to do with it. I've heard that when he travels, the entire rail line on which his train is running gets shut to all other traffic - resulting in backlogs, chaos and possibly enough mayhem to lead to a gigantic fark-up.
Not that I'd want facts to get in the way of the usual PPRuNe uninformed opinion...
In a Stalinist society, such as North Korea's, the leader leads everything, so that any disaster reflects upon his leadership. Check out the propaganda paintings with Kim Il Sung showing the dummy engineers where to site the hydroelectric dam, say. The Big Man can do everything except have babies, and even there he probably dishes out some useful advice to expectant mothers.
Thus a disaster is quite a hot potato in political terms and cannot be treated as a normal news item. In fact, in a Stalinist state there are no normal news items; everything is carefully judged against the desired image that must be presented to a hostile, counter-revolutionary outside world. Objective truth doesn't come into it at all.
Remember that North Korean missile test, with a non-existent satellite whizzing around playing patriotic songs?
It will be interesting to see how they spin this one. Sabotage?
Rumour has it they dont have petroleum etc. it was probably excess fermentation of cabbages
..and unfortunately they dont give a damn about people and they are never going to tell the truth or will you get the true picture...so frankly who cares it's North Korea
Regardless of the quality of journalism on Yahoo, that's exactly the same story I've been hearing on various radio stations here.
However, North Korea seems to have imposed a news blackout, so we'll probably never know for sure.
The point about a backlog of trains after the private train went though is a good one, and I never would have thought of it.
Sadly, another comment I heard on the radio is that North Korea's medical system will probably be overwhelmed initially by a disaster of this magnitude. They may not be keen on asking the International Red Cross for assistance either.
The people caught up in all this, for all we know, may not necessarily agree with their so called leaders policies, and, after all, are humans/women and children.
Interesting to note that the Leader of a "relatively" small country like N. Korea uses trains to get around. Fear of flying, worried about missiles or just no JetA1 around?
I feel sorry for people who are continually ground into the dirt by despots & Stalinist wannabee's. These people need our help & as much as I have no time for their leadership, I hope they can get some aid from wherever.
BH, that's a photo of the train station taken last May, so it isn't current.
I don't have a link, but here's the caption that ran with that photo in a story I read:
"A satellite photo of the North Korean city of Ryongchon taken May 13, 2003 shows the train line running from the top left of the image to the bottom center. Up to 3,000 people were killed or injured when two fuel-laden trains collided and exploded at a North Korean station in the center of Ryongchon near the Chinese border just hours after leader Kim Jong-il had passed through, according to South Korean media. Photo by Digitalglobe/Reuters "
