North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is making a 60-hour journey to Vietnam - where he will meet Donald Trump - on board a bulletproof train dubbed the 'Kim Jong-un Express'.
The green train with yellow
horizontal stripes was spotted crossing the Yalu river into
China on Saturday night.
The one-of-a-kind luxury train is said to carry a small army of bodyguards and bulletproof cars that can usher the 'supreme leader' to safety if he is attacked.
It resembles the armoured transport his father, Kim Jong-il, used for lavish parties during trips to China or Russia - reportedly with lobster, cases of French wine and female entertainers known as 'lady conductors'.
The private train's specially-crafted carriages are reinforced with a coat of armour and have tinted windows to hide those on board.
No
-one knew how Kim intended to make the journey to Hanoi for his
second peace summit with the US president - on Wednesday and Thursday - until the
train rumbled over the border bridge into China.
Along the way, it would have passed small villages where Kim's people are living in poverty and squalor.
Photos released by North Korean state media show Kim standing in a carriage door and waving shortly before the train left the capital Pyongyang.
He's opted to travel about 60 hours by rail instead of taking a four-hour flight.
The train - which has 21 carriages equipped with all-white conference rooms, dining cars and sleeping quarters - was later pictured at a station in the border city of Dandong, China.
Some carriages are decorated with pink leather chairs,
big-screen TVs and ivory-coloured curtains in
the windows.
The train also has satellite phone connections so Kim can
keep abreast of developments and issue orders, according to
state television.
One carriage contains his bulletproof Mercedes-Benz car.
Ahn Byung-min, a
senior analyst at South Korea's government-funded Korea
Transport Institute, told Reuters: "His private train for sure has a luxurious interior and
good-quality facilities, but it also can travel safely in China,
with pretty good rail tracks there."
If Kim makes the entire journey by rail, the train will travel a vast distance across China before arriving in Hanoi after about two-and-a-half days.
It is possible Kim and his large security detail could stop on the way, possibly in Beijing, and complete the rest of the journey by air.
The train can travel at 50mph on China's rail network, compared with a maximum of about 28mph on North Korea's system, said Ahn.
Last year, Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju used the train to make an unofficial visit to Beijing, where they were pictured on board with other officials and waving from an open window.
Kim is using the train to make peace with Trump, but he has used the train to prepare for war in the past.
In 2016, state media showed him arriving back in Pyongyang
to a red-carpet celebration
from a satellite launching station in Sohae, after the
successful testing of a long-range rocket that the US said was an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Kim has since pledged to dismantle missile engine-testing and launch facilities at the Sohae site.
Trains have become part of the Kim family lore - and accounts from former passengers and South Korean news reports have revealed some of their secrets.
Its carriages have been customised to include conference rooms, bedrooms, a dining car, an office car and reception facilities, and are kitted out with flat-screen televisions, computers and satellite phones.
According to South Korean media, the leader has about 90 fortified carriages at its disposal.
Three trains were used when Kim's father made long-distance journeys. He travelled in the middle train, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported in 2009.
The first train carried about 100 security personnel who searched stations further ahead for bombs and tested track safety to make sure the rails weren't sabotaged.
The train following behind the late leader's carriage carried more bodyguards and supplies.
The travelling entourage would be accompanied on trips within North Korea by military helicopters and planes to look for potential threats.
It was claimed the elder Kim - who died on a train in 2011 - would throw lavish parties complete with bouts of heavy drinking, expensive food, karaoke and musical performances on his journeys.
Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian official who travelled with Kim Jong-il through Russia for three weeks in 2001, once told how guests on board the train could order dishes of Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and French cuisine, the New York Times reported.
He said the leader had live lobster and other fresh delicacies delivered to the train as it crossed Siberia, and cases of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines were flown in from Paris, said Pulikovsky, wrote about the experience in his memoir of the trip.
Barbecued pork was said to be among the dishes served to passengers.
Kim Jong-il would be entertained by female entertainers, known as 'lady conductors', who sang in Korean and Russian when he was bored.
Some 20 stations had been built specifically for Kim Jong-il's own use in North Korea before he was said to have died of a heart attack on board his train in December 2011.
A replica of one of the carriages is displayed at the grand mausoleum where Kim Jong-il and his father and North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung, who also travelled by train, rest in state.
There were claims an explosion involving trains near the Chinese border in 2004 was part of a failed assassination plot on the elder Kim, who had passed by hours earlier.
There have been just fleeting glimpses of the train's interior in North Korean state media reports.
Kim Jong-il, who hated flying and led a playboy lifestyle, was once seen in a dining car surrounded by food as he was served by staff and entertained by well-dressed performers.
He was said to have made more than a dozen foreign trips to China and Russia.
South Korean and American intelligence services have been spying on the train for years, using satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance equipment, it was reported.
North Korea's founding leader, Kim Il-sung, the current leader's
grandfather, travelled abroad by train regularly during his rule
until his death in 1994.
His train journeys included a trip to Vietnam in 1958 when
he transferred in Beijing to a plane, and travel to Eastern
Europe in 1984 via the Soviet Union.
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