BREAKING NEWS MSNBC News Services Updated: 11:41 a.m. ET April 22, 2004SEOUL, South Korea - North Korean authorities declared a state of emergency Thursday in the region where two fuel trains collided and exploded, killing or injuring as many as 3,000 people, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.The report did not give details, but said officials of the secretive North Korean government had put in place a "type of state of emergency" around the town of Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.
In a sign of the accident's magnitude, the North Koran government also cut international phone lines to prevent news of the crash from leaking across its borders, Yonhap said, citing no sources.
South Korea's YTN television station reported that up to 3,000 people were killed or injured in the massive blast, which occurred when two freight trains collided in a North Korean station hours after leader Kim Jong-il had passed through.
Posted by the Fourth Man at April 22, 2004 08:06 AM
A day later, it mercifully looks as though there are maybe a lot of injuries but not many fatalities out of all this.
The most-bizarre part of this though being N. Korea's own response, which so far even seems to be including some brush-offs of China's willingness to help.
I can't help but wonder that while mere months ago we may have been concerned with N. Korea and what they might do, it could very well be they're even worse off than we suspected, and not really capabvle of doing much. Their response to this hasn't seemed very organized at all, and if they can't respond to something like this internally one has to question their potential to do much real harm.
-- Primis.
Posted by: Primis at April 23, 2004 06:04 PMYeah, most of their own efforts have been at cutting off contact within the country, although in the past day they've been openly appealing for international aid - which is in and of itself something big coming from them.
Posted by: Zibblsnrt at April 23, 2004 10:35 PM