Russian diplomats flee from North Korea in a hand-powered train car

Just over a year, the diplomats were unable to leave North Korea after Pyongyang sealed its borders due to the corona virus. The group decided to leave on their own and traveled 32 hours by train and another two hours by bus to reach the North Korean-Russian border.

Then came “the most challenging part” – the crossing to Russia, the State Department wrote on Facebook

To do this, the group mounted a specially made wooden cart on the rails, loaded it with their belongings – including their children – and ‘they went away’, pushing the motor car by hand for nearly a mile until it entered Russian territory. drove in. ministry said.

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

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

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

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

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

“It may look fun and elegant, when in fact this career is very tough, intense, a complete ordeal,” he added. “Episodes of this kind can also sometimes occur.”

Calls for comment on the Russian diplomats’ journey to the North Korean embassy in Moscow went unanswered.

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

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

Ms. Zakharova said the State Department “turned to Pyongyang several times with requests to help our diplomats,” unfortunately this was not the first time Russian nationals had to leave North Korea by rail car, said they.

Anastasia Chernitskaya, press attaché from the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the trolley was created by the RasonConTrans joint venture between Russia and North Korea. A representative for the company told the news agency that the rail car was specially made for the emergency transport of people across the bridge over the Tumannaya River, the news agency reported.

The dramatic journey of the embassy officials comes as North Korea appears particularly vulnerable to the pandemic due to poverty and the country’s weak healthcare infrastructure.

Sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council following the latest Pyongyang nuclear tests are blocking the entry of metal objects and computers, creating barriers for certain medical instruments and equipment. The regime’s access to foreign banks is also limited.

North Korea has reported zero coronavirus infections, but has simultaneously asked several European embassies how it might get the vaccines, according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal last month.

The country has applied to receive the Covid-19 virus from World Health Organization-backed Covax, a global alliance that helps lower-income countries secure vaccines, the Journal reported.

Russia and North Korea have long been allies, and the Kremlin has urged the United Nations to ease 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] turned out to be the only country not to catch the infection. He added that he “has no doubt” that if even one Covid-19 case had been discovered in Pyongyang, the embassy would have been closed.

—Timothy Martin in Seoul contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at [email protected]