Russia and North Korea plan to restart a direct passenger train service between their capitals from mid-June onwards for the first time since its suspension in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a Russian Railways (RZD) statement on Telegram, dated June 9.
In agreement with its North Korean counterpart, a bi-monthly service will be resumed between Moscow and Pyongyang from June 17 onwards. RZD calls this 8-day journey the “longest direct train route in the world”.
The route, which is more than 10,000km long, passes through the 800-metre-long Tumangang Friendship Bridge on the Tumen river located far towards the east of Russia (also known as the Korea-Russia Friendship Bridge), which is the only land link that the two countries share.
The service will thereafter carry passengers from Pyongyang on the 3rd and 17th of each month, and passengers from Moscow on the 12th and 26th of each month.
Another service between Pyongyang and Khabarovsk (a Russian city close to its border with North Korea), will restart on June 19 onwards, once a month. This journey is said to take only two days, with a service from Pyongyang on the 19th of every month, and from Khabarovsk on the 21st of every month.
The services will be operated by the Korean State Railway, the national operator for North Korea, with the Moscow-Pyongyang route seeing a North Korean passenger railcar hitched to the ongoing Moscow-Vladivostok service, and then re-attached to another train, a Reuters report explained.
The two nations share military ties that were solidified by a 2024 treaty, as well as Pyongyang's military aid to Moscow at various points in the latter's three-year conflict with Ukraine, and are also linked by freight rail networks, although the details of incoming and outgoing cargo remain undisclosed.
