Seoul, South Korea:
Eight Russian diplomats and loved ones members — the youngest of them a 3-year-old girl — have arrived property from North Korea on a hand-pushed rail trolley due to Pyongyang’s coronavirus restrictions.
Video posted on Russia’s foreign ministry’s verified Telegram account showed the trolley, laden with suitcases and girls, getting pushed across a border railway bridge by Third Secretary Vladislav Sorokin, the only man in the group.
They waved and cheered as they approached their homeland, the culmination of an expedition that started with a 32-hour train trip from Pyongyang, followed by a two-hour bus ride to the border.
“It took a long and difficult journey to get home,” the ministry stated in the post late Thursday, speaking of the final stretch.
“To do this, you need to make a trolley in advance, put it on the rails, place things on it, seat the children — and go,” it stated.
“Finally, the most important part of the route — walking on foot to the Russian side.”
Sorokin was “the main ‘engine’ of the non-self-propelled railcar”, it stated, and had to push it for more than a kilometre.
Once on Russian territory, they have been met by foreign ministry colleagues and have been taken by bus to Vladivostok airport.
“Don’t leave your own behind”, the ministry added as a hashtag.
North Korea imposed a strict border shutdown in January final year to attempt to guard itself from the coronavirus that initially emerged in neighbouring China and has gone on to sweep the globe.
The shutdown has cancelled all flights in or out of the nuclear-armed, sanctions-hit nation, and cross-border trains.
‘Rigorous and demanding work’
With employees and supplies unable to enter, the restrictions have severely hampered the activities of diplomats and help workers, and various Western embassies have pulled out their complete employees.
But Russia has close relations with the North and maintains a substantial diplomatic presence.
On Friday, the Kremlin stated the journey out of North Korea demonstrated that diplomatic service is no stroll in the park.
“It seems very pleasant and elegant but in reality this is very complex, rigorous and demanding work,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, himself a educated diplomat, told reporters.
“Things like this can happen too,” he added.
Stalin’s Soviet Union played a important part in the North’s foundation immediately after it and the US decided to split the peninsula into two zones either side of the 38th parallel following the World War II surrender of Korea’s colonial overlord Japan.
Moscow nevertheless has a grand embassy in a prime spot in central Pyongyang, close to the North Korean leadership compound.
In South Korea, individuals on the internet reacted gleefully to reports of how the diplomats departed.
“I am glad I was not born in North Korea,” one posted on South Korea’s greatest web portal Naver.
Another joked: “Please return your cart to where you found it.”
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