Kim Jong Un's Train Travel: A Symbol of Power and Prestige

In a vast and elaborate complex on the edge of the North Korean capital, they sit frozen in time; two luxurious train carriages designed specifically for two supreme leaders — father and son, the predecessors of the man who is now in the middle of his own unusual railway diplomacy in Russia.

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When it comes to North Korea’s dynastic dictators, the tradition of train travel — and, some have said, the insistence upon it — extends across the generations. That’s in evidence at the massive Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where reconstructions of Kim Jong Un’s father’s and grandfather’s train cars — and, not incidentally, the leaders’ preserved and displayed remains — are enshrined.

The prominent place that the elder two Kims’ highly secure train cars occupy in the shrine to their leadership hints at the central role of train travel among North Korean leaders, who have used trains for travel domestically and sometimes abroad since the early days of the state.