Ryongchon disaster

The Ryongchon disaster is a mysterious event that occured in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on April 22, 2004. The mystery largerly derives from the nation's own secrecy but also from statistics published by the Red Cross, the BBC report, South Korean Report, and others that don't largely match up. They all share a consensus that the disaster involved a train and occured at a train station with numbers ranging from 54 to 160 killed with 1249 injured to 3000 injured. The DPRK sent a request for international aid the day after the incident but allowed only a few agencies to respond. The Red Cross being one of them along side a number of diplomats. The Red Cross reported that 160 had been killed and 1,300 injured with 1,850 buildings destroyed and another 6,350 damaged. The number of buildings destroyed in relation to the number of fatalities is a factor adding the mystery behind this event; a mystery further hightend by a Syrian aircraft arriving to recover the bodies of Syrian citizens caught in the explosion- with their bodies being transported in lead coffins back to Syria. According to the KCNA (the Korean Central News Agency) the incident was caused by worker neglegence while loading ammonium nitrate onto a railcart as the substance came into contact with a live wire and detonated the cargo causing death in and around the loading dock while also destroying the adjacent buildings and damaging those around it. China reported the same cause with the BBC suggesting that as the Supreme Leader had visited the station moments before- that the event was an attempt to kill him but South Korean agencies where quick to dismiss that in relation to the destruction caused by the explosion. The cargo may or may not have come for China though North Korean agencies have been content in this event being the result of worker neglegence rather then a sinister plot of some kind. It was one of the few negative events to be covered by the KCNA which is generally a network devoted to positive domestic and negative foriegn reports.