North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong Il received a red carpet welcome Sunday in Russia’s Amur region where he toured a giant power station ahead of talks with President Dmitry Medvedev.
Kim on Saturday kicked off a week-long visit to the Russian Far East and Siberia, a rare trip out of a country battling isolation and hunger.
Earlier on Sunday his armoured train arrived at the small Bureya station in the Amur region and smiling Russian women dressed in red national costumes offered the high-profile guest a loaf of bread and salt in accordance with Russian tradition. The 69-year-old leader looked serious and tired as flag-waving locals greeted him at the station. Sporting sunglasses and his trademark khaki-colored military-style suit, Kim broke off a piece of bread as the Kremlin’s regional envoy Viktor Ishayev and a throng of local officials looked on.
After the short welcome ceremony Kim got into an armoured Mercedes, which arrived with him aboard the train, to visit a nearby hydro power station. He took a keen interest in the 2,000 megawatt-strong Bureiskaya power station as Ishayev and the local governor gave him a tour of the plant. At the power station — the largest in Russia’s Far East — Kim was treated to a spectacular show of the water being discharged into the river, a local law enforcement official said. He watched the water release from the safety of a white tent pitched at the station, next to a table with snacks, pies and a watermelon, and was also shown a film about the plant translated into Korean, the official said. A Russian official familiar with the matter told AFP Kim had planned to visit the station earlier in the summer when he had been expected to hold a bilateral summit with Medvedev in or near Vladivostok.
