N Korea regime mounts disaster cover-up

The opaque Stalinist regime that holds a monopoly on power and views freedom of information as a potential threat to its survival responded to the blast in the northern city of Ryongchon in typically secretive fashion.

Phone links to the outside world were cut, neighbouring countries were starved of information, and a tight news blackout was imposed, according to officials and media reports.

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North Korea has yet to break its silence on the explosion which ripped through the railway station at Ryongchon in the northwest of the country, 20km south of the border with China.

News reports in South Korea, citing sources over the Chinese border, said phone links, as well as train services from China to Ryongchon, were cut off following the disaster, in which Red Cross officials said at least 54 people were killed and over 1,200 injured.

South Korea's government complained of "difficulties confirming details" and Jeong Se-Hyun, the Unification Minister who handles relations with North Korea, said he had received no official word from Pyongyang concerning the blast.

The head of South Korea's National Red Cross is currently in Pyongyang and had offered aid to the North Koreans, but has received no information concerning the disaster.

Offers of humanitarian aid from South Korea, Australia and the United States were met with silence.

International aid agencies and diplomats based in Pyongyang have also been kept in the dark.

A correspondent for Russia's ITAR-TASS, one of the few journalists from an outside the country based in Pyongang, said that North Korean officials refused to comment on the disaster and North Korea's media was mute.

The only direct confirmation has come from a railway official on duty at Pyongyang station who said there had been an accident near the border with China, ITAR-TASS reported.

"It is a rule for the North Korean propaganda mill not to talk about any accidents," said a North Korean defector based here who helps run a radio station that broadcasts information into North Korea.

"I've never found out a thing about accidents or disasters through North Korea's media," he said.

Another defector, Jong Yong-Sun, 68, said North Koreans would clam up and refuse to talk about any negative events, fearing the ubiquitous public security agents.

Though North Korea has repeatedly said it wants to open up its economy to the outside world, the leadership's grip on political power and control of information remains tight.