Should anyone be surprised that the Dear Leader turned dearly departed aboard a train carriage? A somewhat outdated mode of transport, forever travelling the same route where the passengers’ conditions are predetermined according to class: in many ways, North Korea is a train. Certainly, transit by locomotive is one of the few means by which foreigners will see, albeit in snatches, the real DPRK.

In November 2003, the real DPRK appeared to resemble a rather dour water colour as I gazed out of a ‘soft sleeper’ carriage en route to the border city of Sinuiju.  North Korea in winter is a study in dun browns, beige and muddy yellows. The farmland I saw in those colours was bristly and unkempt, broken by thickets of spruce and juniper trees. The 20^th century intruded fleetingly, the 21^st century not at all. On the roads sliding past, transport was largely on foot or by bicycle. A photograph I managed to snap-surreptitiously-showed an antiquated Russian truck packed with civilians, skinny and threadbare.