The story
1945–1953: Liberation, partition, and the Korean War
The first railways in the future territory of North Korea were built during the period of Japanese rule by the Chosen Government Railway (Sentetsu), the South Manchuria Railway (Mantetsu) and private companies such as the Chosen Railway (Chōtetsu). At the end of the Pacific War, 2,879.3 km (1,789.1 mi) (2,466.1 km (1,532.4 mi) of standard gauge, and 413.2 km (256.8 mi) of 762 mm (30.0 in) narrow gauge) was Sentetsu owned, and 851.5 km (529.1 mi) (678.4 km (421.5 mi) of standard gauge and 173.1 km (107.6 mi) of narrow gauge) was privately owned. In September 1945 the rolling stock was 678 locomotives (124 steam tank, 446 tender, 99 narrow gauge steam, and 8 electric locomotives), one steam-powered railway crane, 29 powered railcars, 747 passenger cars, and 6,928 freight cars.
The official division of Korea into Soviet and American zones of occupation along the 38th parallel in August 1945 disrupted train service on the (former) Kyŏngwŏn and Kyŏngŭi Lines. However, as early as 26 August, the Soviet army began operating trains on the Kyŏngŭi Line north of Sariwŏn; in the south the US Army Transportation Corps took control of the railways and restarted service on the Kyŏngŭi Line from Tosŏng (north of Kaesŏng) to the south. In May 1946 crossing the 38th parallel without a permit became illegal, and on 9 August 1946 identification cards became necessary for rail travel in the northern part of Korea.
On 10 August 1946 the Provisional People’s Committee for North Korea nationalised all railways in the Soviet occupation zone; everything related to railway operations came under the aegis of the People's Committee for Transportation. The railways were nearly paralysed by a lack of experienced staff as a result of the expulsion of ethnic Japanese – most railway workers, especially the skilled labourers, the locomotive crews, mechanics, engineers, and administrators, were Japanese; to make the situation worse, the Soviet Army plundered a great deal of industrial equipment from northern Korea – factory machines, components for hydroelectric dams, and a large number of locomotives and rolling stock. Passengers resorted to riding on the infrequent freight trains, and even on locomotives.
The Korean State Railway (Kukch'ŏl) was created as a department of the Ministry of Transportation in 1948 after the founding of North Korea. Initially, Kukch'ŏl had 3,767 km (2,341 mi) of functional railway, including the restored electrified Yangdŏk–Sinch'ang–Ch'ŏnsŏng section of the P'yŏngwŏn Line, and the newly electrified Kaego–Koin section of the Manp'o Line.
On 10 December 1947, the assets of the Chosen Government Railway were formally divided between North and South, leaving Kukch'ŏl with 617 steam locomotives (141 tank, 476 tender), 8 electric locomotives, and 1,280 passenger cars and 9,154 freight cars (747 and 6,928 respectively according to other sources).
Other new construction took place prior to 1950, but the Korean War which broke out on 25 June 1950 interrupted progress. Initially, the Korean People's Army was dominant, occupying most of the Korean Peninsula apart from a small pocket around Pusan; during this time, many railway vehicles, such as DeRoI-class electric locomotives and steam locomotives built in Japan after the end of the war and delivered to South Korea as reparations, were taken to North Korea. At the same time, war aid in the form of locomotives and freight cars arrived from friendly socialist countries such as the USSR, China, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. American-led United Nations forces quickly turned the tide of the war, however; by 19 October of the same year had captured P'yŏngyang, and a week later, South Korean troops reached the Yalu River. Throughout the Korean War, much of the railway infrastructure and many of the locomotives were destroyed. On 31 December 1950, a train, consisting of the locomotive Matei 10 and 25 cars, going from Hanp'o to Munsan was ordered to stop at Changdan by the US Army, and was destroyed; the track was also destroyed, after which the Kyŏngŭi Line remained severed for over 50 years. UN forces were quickly pushed back south of the 38th parallel, and by the end of the year the war had become a stalemate; little exchange of territory happened over the next two years of fighting until the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on 27 July 1953.
1953–1959: Rebuilding from nothing
North Korea was left devastated after the war, with damage being even more extensive than in the south. Factories, houses, bridges, roads, and railways were destroyed in heavy US Air Force bombing raids; Pyongyang's tram system had been completely destroyed, to the extent that salvaging it was deemed uneconomical and was abandoned. Reconstruction, however, started already before the end of the war and, with the aid of the Chinese People's Volunteer Corps, by the time the ceasefire was signed 1,382 km (859 mi) of railway lines had been restored. The north's transportation network was so severely damaged that in many places, the horse was the only viable means of transport; consequently, much of the initial reconstruction efforts were focussed on rebuilding the railways - especially the lines connecting the DPRK to China and Russia, in order to ease the shipment of goods from those two countries. However, some new construction did take place, mostly to complete projects interrupted either by the end of Japanese rule or by the Korean War, such as the Tŏkp'al Line, which had been started by the privately owned West Chosen Central Railway in the early 1940s, to run from Tŏkch'ŏn to P'arwŏn, but of which only 12.3 km (7.6 mi) to Changsangri had been completed by war's end; the project was revived after the Korean War and finished to P'arwŏn in 1954. Within three months of the armistice, 308 bridges with a total length of 15,000 m (49,000 ft) were either repaired or newly built by railway corps volunteers, and 37 stations were rebuilt as the railway network was gradually restored to its pre-war status.
Although the USSR did not militarily intervene in the Korean War due to fear of criticism from the United Nations (UN), it played a major and active role in post-war reconstruction. Within the context of an economic and technical assistance agreement worth 1 billion rubles signed between the two countries a railway co-operation agreement was signed, which included a promise to deliver VL19 class electric locomotives to North Korea. China provided 800 million RMB worth of assistance, along with considerable aid from socialist countries in Eastern Europe, especially Poland: between 1954 and 1956, Polish Railway engineers and mechanics assisted in North Korea with the repair of damaged steam locomotives and rolling stock. With extensive Soviet and Chinese assistance, the railways were rebuilt and further expanded. A replacement railway bridge was opened over the Taedong River in P'yŏngyang on 17 June 1954, and three months later, on 25 September 1954 the Kangwŏn Line was reopened between Kosan and P'yŏnggang. The Yalu River Bridge between Sinŭiju and Dandong, China, which had been severely damaged during the war, was rebuilt before war's end.
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On 5 February 1954, an agreement signed between China and the DPRK on cross-border train service, and a Beijing-Pyongyang through-train service began on 3 June of that year, using China Railways rolling stock. The connection with the USSR across the Tumen River was first established during the Korean War in the form of a wooden railway bridge opened in 1952; by the mid-1950s this bridge had become insufficient for the traffic on the line, and the Korean-Russian Friendship Bridge between Tumangang and Khasan, USSR was opened on 9 August 1959.
North Korea had inherited a fairly extensive network of 762 mm (30.0 in) narrow-gauge rail lines from both Sentetsu and formerly privately owned railways. One of these was the Hwanghae Line running from Hasŏng to Haeju. After nationalising the Chosen Railway's narrow-gauge lines in the Hwanghae region in April 1944, Sentetsu had decided that traffic levels between Sariwŏn and Hasŏng were sufficient to merit construction of a shorter standard gauge line to replace the existing narrow gauge line; the work was completed quickly, and by September of that year the new, 41.7 km (25.9 mi) "Hwanghae Main Line" was opened. However, the rest of the line from Hasŏng to Haeju remained narrow gauge. The Hwanghae Main Line was, like most other lines, extensively damaged in the Korean War; refurbishment of the Hwanghae Main Line was completed in 1956, and Kim Il Sung visited the reconstruction works in June of that year. Conversion of the Hasŏng—Haeju—Haeju Port section to standard gauge took place in 1958. Work was carried out by youth "volunteer" teams, who finished the project on 12 August 1958 – 75 days after work began. In honour of the efforts of the youth volunteer teams, the Sariwŏn—Haeju line was given its current name, Hwanghae Ch'ŏngnyŏn Line – Hwanghae Youth Line.
In 1956, the railway factories at West P'yŏngyang (today's Kim Chong-t'ae Electric Locomotive Works; it received its present name in 1969 to honour South Korean revolutionary activist Kim Chong-t'ae, a member of the Revolutionary Party for Reunification, who was executed by the South Korean government that year.) and at Wŏnsan (the 4 June Rolling Stock Works) were rebuilt and expanded with Polish assistance. The locomotive factory was reopened on 29 August 1959, while the 4 June Works, manufacturing freight cars as well as repairing steam locomotives and busses, became operational on 15 June 1957. The station building of P'yŏngyang Station, which had been made mostly of wood and had been destroyed during the Korean War, was also rebuilt, with the grandiose stone station building in use today, with a total area of 13,000 m2 (140,000 sq ft) being opened in 1957. To train new generations of railway engineers and railway workers, the P'yŏngyang Railway University was opened in September 1959.
Thus, by the end of the 1950s, North Korea's rail network had been restored to what it had been during the period of Japanese rule, with 3,167 km (1,968 mi) of standard gauge and 599 km (372 mi) of narrow-gauge lines once again operational.
The 1960s: Electrification and the advances of the Ch'ŏllima Movement
The 1960s were a breakthrough decade for North Korea. With the reconstruction of damage caused by the Korean War nearly complete, great advances were being made under the Ch'ŏllima Movement, the North Korean equivalent of China's Great Leap Forward; the efforts were both focussed on and aided by the railways. Development was also aided by the fact that, during the colonial era, most Japanese construction of heavy industry including machine manufacturing, as well as the bulk of railway development, took place in the north of the country; the DPRK was also blessed with an abundance of natural resources and a number of large hydroelectric power plants that had also been built by the Japanese. Much of the work done on the railways in this period was focussed on the electrification of trunk lines. Due to the increased importance placed on the railways, by 1965 Kukch'ŏl was transferred from the Ministry of Transport to a newly established Ministry of Railways (조선 민주주의 인민 공화국 철도성, Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk Ch'ŏltosŏng).
Re-electrification of the Yangdŏk–Ch'ŏnsŏng section of the P'yŏngra Line, which had been initially electrified in 1948 but destroyed during the Korean War, was completed with Soviet assistance on 25 May 1956, but the large-scale electrification of North Korea's rail lines began only in 1958; by the end of the 1960s, nearly 900 km (560 mi) of lines had been electrified, and by 1973, when the electrification of the P'yŏngra Line was completed, over 1,300 km (810 mi) of lines had been electrified, realising the goal of electrifying all major trunk lines. Electrification of the lines was accompanied by the manufacture of electric locomotives. Domestic production of small electric locomotives for use in mines had begun in 1958, but production of mainline electric locomotives didn't start until a few years later. Although the USSR had promised to deliver Soviet-made electric locomotives to North Korea, this never took place, so to supplement the sixteen electric locomotives inherited from Sentetsu, in 1958 Kukch'ŏl ordered ten Type 22E2 locomotives from the Škoda Works of Czechoslovakia. This was just a temporary measure, however, as the main goal was the development of a domestically produced electric locomotive. To this end, a licence to build the Škoda Type 30E was bought from Czechoslovakia, including technology transfer, and a number were built to the original design to gain familiarity with the process, but most of the effort was placed on designing the larger, indigenous design. The prototype of the DPRK's first domestically produced mainline electric locomotive, the Red Flag 1, was completed at the Kim Chŏng-t'ae Works (then called the P'yŏngyang Electric Locomotive Works) on 30 August 1961, and Kim Il Sung visited the plant for the occasion and chose the locomotive's name personally. Serial production started in 1962, with twenty built that year, followed by another thirty in 1963; eventually, over 150 were built.
Meanwhile, in order to modernise on non-electrified lines, Kukch'ŏl started ordering diesel locomotives to begin replacing steam power on these lines. The first step towards dieselisation came in 1964, with the arrival of fourteen DVM-4-type locomotives from Ganz-MÁVAG of Hungary, which were used both for shunting and to pull local trains on branchlines. After this positive initial experience with diesel power, an order was placed for larger, more powerful locomotives suitable for use on heavy mainline trains. Made in the USSR to meet a Hungarian requirement, the first two prototypes of the M62-type locomotives appeared on Soviet Railways in 1964 before series production and deliveries to Hungary began in 1965; by the time Kukch'ŏl received their first deliveries of the type - designated K62-class by the factory - in 1967, the M62 had become the backbone of diesel power all over the Comecon world: in addition to Hungary, in 1965 and 1966 the type was put in service in large numbers in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. A total of 64 were delivered to North Korea between 1967 and 1974, quickly becoming mainstays on non-electrified lines due to their high performance and ease of use.
Along with the electrification of the trunk lines, construction of new routes was also started in this period. Many of these lines, such as the Unbong Line opened in 1959 to assist with construction of the Unbong Dam, the Pinallon Line opened in 1961 to serve the February 8 Vinylon Complex and the P'yŏngyanghwajŏn Line opened in the same year to serve the Pyongyang Thermal Power Plant were entirely new projects, initially built to aid with the construction of various large-scale industrial and power-generation projects, and some, like the first section of Ch'ŏngnyŏn Ich'ŏn Line from P'yŏngsan to Chihari opened in 1962 as a fully electrified line, were the initial phases of planned new trunk lines. However, many others, though publicised as being entirely at the instigation of the Great Leader, were simply completions of projects initiated by Japanese interests before 1945. The much celebrated completion of the P'yŏngra Line, opened on 10 June 1965 as a shortcut line leading to a significant reduction in travel time between Chongjin and Rajin, was actually just the completion of the Ch'ŏngra Line project started by Sentetsu in 1945, but whose construction was interrupted by the end of Japanese rule. Similarly, the Tŏksŏng Line, opened by Kukch'ŏl on 6 October 1960, was simply an implementation of an unrealised Sentetsu project of the 1940s to extend a line that had been completed as early as 1929, or the Kŭmgol Line, whose completion was announced in 1962, when Kŭmgol was reached; this was, however, only a 3.7 km (2.3 mi) extension to complete a project begun by a private railway in the colonial era, with most of the line (almost 60 km (37 mi)) being opened in 1943. Some of the newly built lines were 762 mm (30.0 in) narrow gauge, such as the 53.7 km (33.4 mi) Ŭnnyul Line opened in 1963 (this was converted to standard gauge in 1971), and the Sŏhaeri Line, opened in 1964 to serve iron ore mines and a small port.
The 1970s and 1980s: The golden years
In the 1970s, North Korea aimed to further develop the railways through the promotion of science and technology. In the "Six-Year Plan for People's Economic Development" that started in 1971, Kim Il Sung, under the slogan "자력 갱생" (Charyŏk Kaengsaeng, "Self-Reliance"), declared that everything - economy, scientific advance, and development of industrial technology - should be made entirely domestically. Though a considerable amount was achieved through domestic effort, a fair amount of the advances that were made came from foreign sources and were simply relabelled as North Korean. The 1970s and 1980s can be considered as having been North Korea's "golden age", and though it did not last long, considerable successes in the development of the railways were achieved.
A great deal of attention was paid to developing urban transit in this period. After the success of the P'yŏngyang trolleybus system opened in 1962, trolleybus services were inaugurated in Ch'ŏngjin (1970), Hamhŭng (1973), Sinŭiju (1978), and Kowŏn (1979), Nampo (1982), P'yŏngsŏng (1983), Haeju (1986), Anju (1987), and others, along with the opening of the P'yŏngyang Metro in 1973; though most of the trolleybusses were built in North Korea to Czechoslovak and Soviet designs, the metro - despite claims of being entirely of domestic production - used mostly equipment supplied from China. However, as at that time even Seoul had no subway system, its opening was proclaimed to be proof of the superiority of the socialist system.
Expansion and electrification of the national railway system continued as well. New trunk lines were opened, such as the completion of the Ch'ŏngnyŏn Ich'ŏn Line on 10 October 1972, the completion of the Ch'ŏngnyŏn P'arwŏn Line, and the opening of shorter lines intended to serve new mines, power plants and factories, such as the Musan Kwangsan Line (1971), the Ch'ŏnghwaryŏk Line and the Namhŭng Line in 1976, the Sŏhae Kammun Line over the West Sea Barrage on 24 June 1986, and numerous other such lines. Some major projects were initiated, such as the Pukpu Line which was to have been a new east–west transversal trunk line in the very north of the country, but were only partially completed: though work started in 1981, the first stage, from Manp'o to Hyesan was completed only in 1988, but further construction was suspended for over twenty years. Regardless, the Sŏhae Kammun and Pukpu Line projects were the largest railway construction projects that the DPRK undertook entirely on its own. As well as building new lines, several existing narrow gauge lines were converted to standard gauge, and by 1983, 927 km (576 mi) had been regauged.
From Wikipedia’s article on Korean State Railway, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4