Russian diplomats are fleeing North Korea in a hand-held railway cart

For just over a year, diplomats could not leave North Korea after Pyongyang sealed its borders because of the coronavirus. Deciding to leave alone, the group traveled 32 hours by train and another two hours by bus to reach the North Korean-Russian border.

Then came the “most challenging part” – crossing into Russia, the foreign ministry wrote on Facebook.

To do this, the group mounted a specially made wooden cart on the rails, loaded it with their belongings – including their children – and “left”, pushing the wagon by hand almost a mile until it entered Russian territory, said the ministry.

The Russian group included the embassy’s third secretary, Vladislav Sorokin, and his 3-year-old daughter, Varya, who was the group’s youngest traveler, the ministry said.

A photo posted on Facebook by the ministry showed three adults pushing the makeshift cart along the tracks, with three children sitting behind big suitcases and boxes, perched on what appears to be a bright red padded bench.

The passengers pushed the cart over a bridge over the Tumannaya River and eventually reached the Russian border station in Khasan, a settlement in the Far East of the country, where they were greeted by officials from the Foreign Ministry office in Vladivostok.

The regional administration then provided a bus, “which delivered compatriots … to Vladivostok airport” and headed for Moscow on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that a diplomatic career “is very difficult and challenging.”

“It can look beautiful and elegant, when, in fact, this career is very hard, intense, a complete ordeal,” he added. “Episodes like this can happen sometimes.”

Calls for comments on Russian diplomats’ trip to the North Korean embassy in Moscow went unanswered.

Mr Sorokin, the third secretary, told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the border guards who met them in Khasan “had such expressions, as if they saw these carts every day, which, of course , it’s not necessary”.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian radio station Komsomolskaya Pravda that the route taken by embassy staff is the most efficient. The alternative would be to travel through China. In that case, however, she should have been quarantined for three weeks and “the trip would take a month,” she said.

Ms Zakharova said the foreign ministry had “returned to Pyongyang with a request to help our diplomats” several times, but unfortunately it was not the first time Russian citizens had to leave North Korea by rail. , she said.

Anastasia Chernitskaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang, told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the cart was made by the RasonConTrans construction company between Russia and North Korea. A company official told the news agency that the railway car was specially designed for the emergency transport of people across the bridge over the Tumannaya River, the news agency reported.

The dramatic journey of embassy staff comes at a time when North Korea seems particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, due to the country’s poverty and poor health care infrastructure.

Sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council following the latest nuclear tests in Pyongyang block imports of metal objects and computers, creating barriers for certain medical instruments and equipment. The regime’s access to foreign banks is also restricted.

North Korea reported zero coronavirus infections, but at the same time asked several European embassies how they could get the vaccines, according to an exclusive report published in The Wall Street Journal last month.

The country has applied to receive the Covid-19 virus shot by the World Health Organization, Covax, a global alliance that helps lower-income countries get their vaccines, the Journal reported.

Russia and North Korea have been allies for a long time, and the Kremlin has called on the United Nations to consider reducing sanctions.

Alexander Matsegora, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, said on the embassy’s Facebook page earlier this month that “due to the most severe bans and restrictions, [North Korea] it turned out to be the only country that did not get the infection ”. He added that he had “no doubt” that if even a Covid-19 case had been discovered in Pyongyang, the embassy would have been closed.

—Timothy Martin of Seoul contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at [email protected]