The Ryongchŏn disaster was a train disaster that occurred in the town of Ryongchŏn, North Korea near the border with China on April 22, 2004.

The disaster occurred when a flammable cargo exploded at the railway station at about 13:00 local time (04:00 GMT). The news was broken by South Korean media outlets, which reported that up to 3,000 people had been killed or injured in the blast and subsequent fires. The North Korean government declared a state of emergency in the region, but little information about the accident has been made public by the notoriously secretive government. Shortly after the accident, the North Korean government cut telephone lines to the rest of the world (an action that South Korean correspondents attributed either to a desire to inhibit foreign reporting or to prevent their own population from learning unfavourable news about the accident).

Initial reports indicated that two trains, one carrying petroleum and the other liquefied natural gas, collided and caused a massive explosion. According to an UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs Report from 24 April 2004, the explosion resulted from the contact of two train wagons carrying ammonium nitrate with a wagon containing fuel oil. Each wagon contained 40 MT of ammonium nitrate which were enroute to a construction site for the Pakma-cheol san irrigation project. This resulted in a massive explosion creating a large crater and leveling everything in a 500 m radius.

The explosion caused major damage to housing and infrastructure, including schools and medical facilities. 1,850 houses were either destroyed or rendered unsafe due to the explosion. Most of these houses were single story dwellings. An estimated 1,850 families (approximately 8,000 people) were been made homeless by the accident. This represents approximately 40 per cent of the area of the township. Public buildings suffered major damage; 12 were completely destroyed and 10 partially destroyed.

The same UN report stated that as of 24 April 2004, the explosion injured approximately 1,300 people, 370 of which were hospitalized. Up to that point, 154 bodies had been recovered, including 76 children. Five people were reported missing. Ryongchon County has a population of 123,200 people, of whom 27,000 live in the county city.

Sources

• BBC, N Korea train blast 'kills many', Thursday, 22 April, 2004, 18:42 GMT
• GlobalSecurity.org, Ryongchon, DPRK, Train-wreck and Explosion, Accessed 26 August 2008
• United Nations Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA Situation Report No. 2, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Explosion in Ryongchon County, Accessed 26 August 2008.
• Wikipedia Contributors, Ryongchon disaster, Accessd 26 August 2008