Munsan Station – Crowds cheered and colourful flares burst skywards as the first train to cross the inter-Korean border in 56 years began its journey with a shrill whistle on Thursday.
Hundreds applauded and waved white-and-blue “reunification” flags as the five-car train pulled by a red, blue and white flower-decked diesel engine set off to cross the world’s last Cold War frontier.
“Chulbal! (Go),” the crowd chanted as the train set off and hundreds of balloons were released.
Apartment residents waved from their windows.
Train driver Shin Jang-Chul, 55, said he felt honoured to make the trip, especially because his now-dead parents came from the North.
“My parents would have been very happy if they could have seen it,” he said.
Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung said the one-off test runs – North Korea has not agreed to regular services – would “tear down the wall of division”.
But Hong Mu-Sun, 71, was not celebrating. She told AFP her husband was kidnapped by the North 40 years ago while fishing in the Yellow Sea, and she had struggled to bring up their four children.
The railway project, she said, “is a good thing for Korea but the South Korean government should push North Korea hard to return the abductees. I have come here to see the North Koreans and ask them to return my husband”.
South Korea says 485 of its people have been kidnapped by the North since the 1950-53 war cemented the division of the peninsula into capitalist South and communist North.
Critics say the government ignored their fate as it pushed a “sunshine” reconciliation policy.
Hong was one of about 30 relatives of abductees at Munsan. Some shouted abuse while others wept as police kept them away from the send-off.
“The inter-Korean railway is nothing more than a castle built on sand,” read one placard. Another referred to the exchange of rare dogs as gifts during an inter-Korean summit in 2000, when the railway project was agreed.
The dogs have come and gone “but why is my father not coming?” it read.
One protester tried to block access to the ceremony with his vehicle. He and supporters scuffled with plainclothes police who brought in a tow-truck.
TV footage from the North’s Mount Kumgang station showed a different scene, with students in identical clothes lined up on the platform and waving demurely to besuited train passengers.
One train ran from the South and one from the North.
The northbound train slowed to a crawl as it neared a high fence topped with barbed wire at the edge of the four-kilometre-wide (2.5-mile) Demilitarised Zone which bisects the peninsula.
A gate was swung shut again after it passed. Minutes later it crossed the Military Demarcation Line in the middle of the zone.
Workers have spent years re-laying the track – with the South footing the bill for work in the North – and on clearing minefields.
[AFP]
