Two trains from North and South Korea crossed the heavily armed border on Thursday, restoring for the first time an artery severed in the 1950-1953 fratricidal war and fanning dreams of unification.
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 25 km.
The trains carried 100 South Koreans and 50 North Koreans including celebrities, politicians and a South Korean conductor from one of the last trains to cross before the rail link was cut in 1951.
“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.
“The trains represent the dreams, the hopes and the future of the two Koreas,” Mr Lee said.
The train from the South was seen off to fireworks, traditional drumming and hundreds of people waving flags showing a unified Korean peninsula. “I wish I could operate this train myself,” said 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.”
North train
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.”
Passengers from the two Koreas dined together and after much coaxing, the conductor from the North shook hands with the South Korean station master.
To entice the North to allow the crossing, South Korea has offered some 80 million dollars in aid for its light industries. Eventually, South Korea, which only shares a border with the North, wants to send passengers and cargo via its neighbour into China and Russia and link with the Trans-Siberian railway.