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Little Rocket Man has a crazy train.
US officials said earlier this week that Kim Jong Un is preparing to board luxury trains to eastern Russia, where the North Korean leader is expected to meet with Vladimir Putin to discuss supplying weapons to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kim, 39, inherited the special train service from his father, former dictator Kim Jong Il, and grew up with a fear of flying.
The cars are bulletproof, and this convoy would certainly not be confused with an express train – the armored protection is so heavy that the average speed reaches 37 miles per hour.
(Amtrak’s Acela Express train tops out at 150 mph, while the French TGV, the world’s fastest, tops out at 357 mph.)
The train is believed to be equipped with dark wood-paneled meeting rooms, as well as multiple bedrooms, satellite phones, flat-screen televisions and nearly 100 security personnel who scan the routes and arriving stations for bombs and other threats.
As for the food truck, chefs are available on call to prepare Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or French cuisine.
Boxes of live lobsters and other delicacies are transported fresh, According to a Russian official’s account in 2002 Konstantin Pulikovsky, who traveled with Kim Jong Il.
Barbecue facilities are available, along with Bordeaux and Beaujolais.
Kim Jong Il was known for being picked on on a train, such as at a station in Omsk when he didn’t like a meal of fried Russian dumplings.
“Kim Jong Il picked them up with a fork and said, ‘What kind of dumplings are these?’” Pulikowski wrote. “They should be large, boiled, and in broth.”
The New York Times reported that the current leader’s diet leans toward Swiss cheese, Crystal Champagne, and Hennessy cognac.
To spice up the trip, a group of female musicians known as “beautiful conductors” would often sing to the elder Kim in Korean and Russian, Pulikovsky wrote.
In anticipation of attacks, a separate train precedes and follows the convoy, said to consist of up to 90 wagons.
The next trip for reigning leader Kim Jong Un, 39, could come Sunday and the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, about 425 miles from Pyongyang.
He also plans to travel via armored train to Russia’s Pier 33, where anti-submarine ships monitor the Pacific port city, as well as a possible stop in Moscow. The New York Times reported.
The expected expedition will be Kim’s first overseas trip since North Korea closed its borders in early 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kim and Putin, 70, last met in April 2019 in Vladivostok, Russia, where the North Korean leader arrived after a 20-hour journey on a green and yellow fortified train.
Kim’s mysterious, slow-moving convoy took him to Beijing in 2018 for secret talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and he rode his armored entourage to meet President Trump in Vietnam in 2019.
About 20 stations across North Korea were built specifically to accommodate the trains, which caught the attention of South Korean and American intelligence agents using reconnaissance aircraft and other methods.
The mausoleum outside Pyongyang, where the bodies of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung lie, houses a replica of the decoy train cars.
With mail wires
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