KEY POINTS:
A North Korean train chugged into the South yesterday for the first time in decades - with a great paint job, lousy brakes and a lot of portraits of Pyongyang's leaders.
"This thing is older than me," said Kim Kyu Jin, 39, a mechanic with South Korea's Korail of the ancient North Korean passenger train parked in a station south of the border.
Inside, the train was pristine, with portraits of the North's "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il hanging between cars.
But the journey was not to highlight the difference between the North and South's rail services. Trains from North and South crossed the heavily armed border to restore an artery severed in the 1950-1953 war and fan dreams of unification.
"Today the heart of the Korean peninsula will start beating again," South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae Joung said before the crossing at the South's Munsan station, about 50 km northwest of Seoul. "The trains represent the dreams, the hopes and the future of the two Koreas."
It took the two Koreas 56 years to send the trains - one starting in the South and one in the North - across the Cold War's last frontier for the one-off runs of about 25km. The trains carried 100 South Koreans and 50 North Koreans - including celebrities, politicians and a conductor from one of the last trains to cross before the rail link was cut in 1951.
The train from the South was seen off to fireworks, traditional drumming and hundreds of people waving flags showing a unified Korean peninsula.
The crossing was carried live by every major South Korean network, but the train quickly disappeared from view on the approach to the North Korean side due to Seoul's long-standing security laws.
There has been no word from North Korea about what happened on its side of the railroad.
"I wish I could operate this train myself," said South Korean Han Chun Ki, 80, the conductor who made one of the last cross-border runs more than a half-century ago. "I never thought this day would come."
On the east coast, South Korean soldiers opened a gate across the tracks at the southern end of the Demilitarised Zone buffer to welcome the train from the North, which had a banner reading: "The Train Once Boarded by Great President Kim Il Sung."
Children presented flowers to officials upon arrival at the station, one of several cavernous facilities built by the South near the border that have been mostly idle.
Passengers from the two Koreas dined together and after much coaxing, the conductor from the North shook hands with the South Korean station master.
North Korea's military, fearful of increased openings between the isolated country and the outside world, cancelled a planned run a year ago but agreed last week to yesterday's run.
- REUTERS
