SEE IT: Russian diplomats leave North Korea by pushing children, luggage on rail cart
They were training for this moment.
A group of Russian embassy workers and their families had to push a rail cart over the country’s border with North Korea to get home Thursday.
Third minister Vladislav Sorokin was the cart’s “main engine,” according to a Facebook post from the Russian foreign ministry. The youngest member of the eight person group was Sorokin’s 3-year-old daughter, Varya.
Как заявили в МИД, дипломаты 32 часа ехали на поезде, затем еще два часа на автобусе до границы и затем — километр пешком с помощью дрезины.
➡️ https://t.co/jc6KmEOxhx
Видео: МИД России pic.twitter.com/K8UPWUrKev— Новая Газета (@novaya_gazeta) February 25, 2021
The hand-powered border crossing was the last step in the group’s 34-hour journey from Pyongyang to the Russian border town of Khasan, just across the Tumen River from the northeast corner of North Korea, according to the ministry.
An actual train handled most of the trip, before Sorokin and company pushed the cart for about 0.6 miles. Russian authorities met them at the border with a bus, which took them to Vladivostok airport.
Travel into and out of North Korea, already limited, has been basically nonexistent since the country locked down in January 2020 to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Russia is one of 24 countries that maintain an embassy in North Korea.
