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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Railway blast triggered North Korean paranoia |
| 2004-04-25 |
| North Koreans thought they were under nuclear attack from the United States when they first heard the blast from Thursday's huge train explosion, it was revealed yesterday. The paranoia of a country that has been at war for more than 50 years was made apparent to international aid workers, who visited the devastated site for the first time yesterday as the government in Pyongyang revealed that 76 children were among those killed in the disaster. In a breakthrough for the secretive nation, 40 representatives of the United Nations, the Red Cross and other groups were allowed to visit Ryongchon, the town close to the border with China, where a train filled with industrial explosives caught fire. The aid workers talked to local people, who told them of the horror they imagined when they heard the first deafening blasts. 'I thought the Americans had finally dropped the bomb,' one woman told Kaika Rajahuhta of the International Red Cross. The Finnish aid worker said other locals had told her the same apocalyptic thought crossed their minds. Although fear is easily stirred up in a population constantly reminded of the threat of US nuclear weapons, the ferocity of the blast alone could have prompted nightmarish images. Aid workers described scenes of carnage near the station, where two huge craters were at the centre of damage that could be seen four kilometres away. 'It looks as though a fireball has swept through,' John Sparrow, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters. 'There was total destruction for several hundred metres around Ryongchon's railway station.' Others among the 40-strong delegation said a three story agricultural college and the railway station had been levelled. Casualties, however, appear to have been far lower than the initial reports of 3,000 dead or injured. North Korean rescue workers have found 154 bodies and the number is not expected to rise. Almost half the dead were infants at a nearby primary school that was reduced to rubble. Government officials said about 350 of the 1,200 injured had been taken to hospitals in Sinuiju, a city on the Chinese border. The homeless were being put up with relatives and other members of this highly communalised society. Aid workers said the situation appeared to be under control. There were no bodies or badly injured people, though some people on the streets had facial injuries that might have been caused by the blast. |
| Posted by:Fred |