Signs of North Korea-China Rapprochement? Pyongyang-Beijing Train and Round-Trip Shanghai Flights Added

Passenger Train Service to Resume After Five and a Half Years
Air Routes Between North Korea and China Also Expected to Increase

A travel-related website operated by North Korean authorities has posted schedules for trains connecting Pyongyang and Beijing, as well as for flights between Pyongyang and Shanghai.

On July 16, the Choson Tourism website, run by the National Tourism Administration of North Korea, published a round-trip train schedule under the title "International Train Timetable." The routes listed are Pyongyang-Beijing, Pyongyang-Dandong, and Pyongyang-Moscow.

Train traveling between Pyongyang and Beijing. Zhengzhou Railway Vocational College official Weibo.

Currently, the only route in operation is the direct train between Pyongyang and Moscow. This service was suspended in February 2020 and resumed operations on June 17 of this year.

Passenger trains between Pyongyang and Chinese cities such as Beijing and Dandong are not currently running.

If passenger train service between Pyongyang and Beijing resumes, it will be the first time in approximately five years and six months since it was suspended in January 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19. On July 12, Japan's NHK reported, citing multiple sources, that North Korea and China had agreed to resume Pyongyang-Beijing passenger train operations.

According to the information disclosed on the website, the train departs Pyongyang at 10:25 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, passes through Dandong and Shenyang, and arrives in Beijing. The return train from Beijing to Pyongyang departs at 5:27 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, passing through Shenyang and Dandong before arriving in Pyongyang.

Air routes between North Korea and China also appear likely to increase. The "International Routes" schedule posted on the Choson Tourism website shows that flight JS 157 departs Pyongyang at 10:10 p.m. every Thursday and Sunday, arriving in Shanghai at 11:30 p.m. Every Monday and Friday, flight JS 158 departs Shanghai at 12:30 a.m. and arrives in Pyongyang at 3:50 a.m.

Since 2023, North Korea has operated flights to Beijing, but the Shanghai route has not yet resumed. There have only been irregular flights between Pyongyang and Shanghai. If flights operate as announced by Choson Tourism, a regular route between the two cities will be restored twice a week.

Relations between North Korea and China had cooled as ties between North Korea and Russia grew closer. However, the recently disclosed train and flight schedules come amid signs of improving relations between North Korea and China, and are seen as a notable development in this context. If passenger train service resumes and air routes increase between North Korea and China, the volume of people-to-people exchanges is expected to rise significantly, which could accelerate the pace of bilateral rapprochement.