[imText1]Dancheon, a city of about 300,000 populations, is a port city on the east coast along the border between South and North Hamkyung province. Dancheon is famous for one of the world’s largest magnesite mines, Yongyang, and Gumdeok zinc mine in Geumgol district. When I was in North Korea, I often went on business trips to Gumdeok mine.
During the era of Japanese colonization, a railroad to transport extracted minerals from the two mines to Dancheon harbor was built. Now, commuter trains are transporting people from Geumgol to Dancheon. There are two trains leaving from Dancheon and Geumgol each, both at 7 in the morning and 8 in the evening.
At 8 P.M. on November 19, 1998, I boarded a train for Gumdeok to visit Gumdeok mine in Geumgol. On average, it takes 3 hours to reach Geumgol station. However, in case of a tie-up, it takes an additional 2 or 3 hours. On that day, while passing Epa station, a power failure occurred and the train stopped.
The thirty minutes on a running amok train felt more like 30 years.
Since train stoppage was normal, nobody panicked and rather waited calmly. About an hour later, the train started its engine again and tried to move forward. However, it was moving backward. Passengers thought it was going back to Epa station for maintenance.
The train did not stop at the station and rather began to move backward with faster speed.
Then, people recognized something was wrong; the train’s brake was not working. The whole passenger train was plunged in confusion. Some passengers rushed towards windows to get out of the unbridled train. Others desperately held anything they could find, but it was futile.
Each carriage from back was ditched as it was hit by a curved line. I found out later that all of those who ran out of the train died.
Everytime the train passed through a tunnel, a ghastly sound horrified passengers. After about half an hour later, the train miraculously stopped 2km from Dancheon station. Everyone remaining on the train breathed a sigh of relief.
The thirty minutes on a running amok train felt more like 30 years. Out of 8 carriages, 4 were derailed and only the other 4, in which I was riding remained. Most of those passengers in the derailed carriages died.
After the tragic incident, I took a freight train for Gumdeok. On my way back to Gumdeok, I was able to watch the horrific scene. In the freight, there were already family members of victim searching for bodies along the railroad.
Derailed carriages were completely destroyed. In Hamkyung area, it is cold in November and enough for water to freeze on the field. Frozen bodies had already been collected along the railroad and arranged by authorities according to sex and age.
It was estimated that about fifteen hundred people died.
Particularly, those who fell under bridge were all dead. It was even more difficult to collect their bodies. Numerous dead bodies were washed away through the river.
It was estimated that about fifteen hundred people died. Railway officials put it about five hundred. Among the victims were more women than men, as many housewives were traveling to sell their stuff to buy potatoes from Gumdeok. During the great famine period, a number of North Korean women sold goods in black markets to make a living.
As I was watching the accident scene, I asked myself how many more innocent lives needed to be sacrificed to end the ‘March of Tribulation.’ Except for a carriage which fell into a river, victims in the remaining three carriages died because of the late rescue. On the day of accident, the temperature was below minus 10 degrees celsius (about 14 degrees fahrenheit). The rescue team arrived at 8 A.M., almost six hours had elapsed.
Those who were not killed immediately in the train froze to death. If the rescuers arrived earlier, more lives would have been saved.
Kim Jong Il, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to decorate his father’s mausoleum, boasts North Korea as being a ‘strong nation,’ despite not even having enough rescue workers and equipments to save his people.
I decided to defect North Korea after the tragic experience in Dancheon.
