SEOUL — In a rare display of openness, North Korea yesterday requested international assistance in coping with a train accident near the country’s border with China on Thursday that killed hundreds of people, according to reports reaching here from abroad.
After receiving an appeal from Pyongyang, officials of the United Nations in Geneva agreed to send an assessment team to the North Korean city of Ryongchon, including education, food, health and relief specialists. The delegation, set to leave today, also will include members from the Red Cross and nongovernmental organizations.
A team of Russian diplomats also is traveling to the disaster site.
“We need the help of the international community, emergency relief,” Pak Gil-yon, North Korea’s U.N. ambassador, told Reuters television in New York.
U.S. defense officials said damage from the blast extended at least 200 yards from the explosion at a railway station in Ryongchon, a city with chemical and metalworking plants and a reported population of 130,000, the Associated Press reported.
There has been no unusual movement of North Korean military forces detected since the explosion, although it is likely some would aid in disaster recovery efforts, the officials told the news wire service.
First reports estimated about 3,000 casualties. The lower casualty estimates came from the British Foreign Office yesterday through its diplomatic posting in North Korea.
Britain, citing information given to its official in Pyongyang, said several hundred people were killed and thousands injured in the explosion near the Ryongchon train station on Thursday.
Michael Breen, a veteran North Korea watcher and biographer of its secretive leader Kim Jong-il, said Pyongyang’s frank appeal for help showed a “very, very unusual level of openness by North Korea.”
“They seem to be moving very quickly to scotch rumors” about the disaster, which occurred just hours after Mr. Kim passed through the station on his way back from a trip to Beijing, Mr. Breen said.
Although the secretive state belatedly appealed for international assistance during the famines of the 1990s, many aid agencies have been frustrated by Pyongyang’s lack of cooperation and openness.
For North Korea to allow international rescue workers such liberal access to a disaster site is virtually unheard of, aid officials said.
North Korea restricts the movement of foreigners, and groups that distribute aid to alleviate its food shortages are barred from some areas. Aid workers have been allowed to visit areas struck by drought or floods in recent years, but the government has never arranged such quick access to the scene of a disaster like the train explosion.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States is evaluating the situation in North Korea to see “if there is a need or an opportunity for the United States to help.”
He noted that the United States has provided humanitarian aid in the past to North Korea. He added that there are “no obstacles” to sending assistance in response to the current situation.
Owing to the apparent scale of the disaster, Pyongyang may have no choice in seeking outside aid. The nation is well supplied with hospitals, but it lacks equipment and medicine. It also is unlikely that North Korea has the kind of teams specialized in locating and rescuing people trapped in ruined buildings.
More details emerged yesterday on the likely causes of the explosion and scale of destruction. Ryongchon is an industrial city close to the Chinese border and is a center for rail freight. The station is close to the center of the town.
U.S. intelligence analysts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, regarded the blast as an industrial accident involving two trains. They added, however, that it was not clear what ignited it.
But Japan’s Kyodo news agency, quoting North Korean sources, said the explosion was caused by an electrical fault that set off a cargo of dynamite being carried for excavation purposes, rather than by a collision of fuel-carrying trains, as was reported previously.
Fifty-four bodies have been recovered, and authorities expect to recover more. Nearly 2,000 buildings were destroyed, and about 6,000 damaged, David Slinn, Britain’s ambassador to North Korea, was told.
The event has sparked a wave of sympathy in South Korea.
“We understand this was a tragic accident,” said Jeong Se-hyun, South Korea’s unification minister, and acting President Goh Kun has ordered the mobilization of relief aid.
But despite the appeals for international aid, North Korea’s tightly controlled media did not mention the disaster in broadcasts yesterday.
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
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