The Coming Rail Boom.(Trans-Siberian Railroad expansion through North and South Korea)

Talk about accidental tourists. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's shadowy strongman, is a homebody if ever there was one. He hates flying. He fears assassins. And when he met South Korean media executives in Pyongyang last year, he quipped: "Why should I go abroad when everyone comes to see me?" So when he set off to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, Kim traveled in a class all his own: chugging along the Trans-Siberian Railway at 40kph in a 21-carriage armored train, accompanied by a phalanx of bodyguards, senior officials and retainers.

Like father, like son. Kim's trip, the most ambitious to date for the world's only remaining Stalinist dictator, retraces his father's 1984 railway journey to visit North Korea's communist "elder brother." That year Kim Il Sung went, hat in hand, to plead for Moscow's aid, trade and weapons. He traveled amid great pomp and ceremony, touring the Soviet Union and its seven Eastern European allies. Little Kim's adventure pales in comparison. There's no communist bloc left to celebrate, and his country, once a well-off Soviet client state, is trapped in perpetual famine. Nevertheless, this time it was the Russian leader who had a favor to ask his North Korean counterpart.

And that favor apparently will be granted. During their summit in Moscow, Kim agreed in principle with Putin's idea to extend the Trans- Siberian Railway through North Korea and onward into South Korea. According to a summit declaration, the project "is entering the stage of active development." The deal is the latest in a rash of new railway projects that are revitalizing steel-and-wheel transport across Asia. The Russian Railways Ministry says all that's missing is a 30- kilometer-long passage across the mine-strewn Korean War armistice line, the DMZ. Putin is one of the plan's biggest cheerleaders: he is eager to bolster Russia's decaying infrastructure and, more important, to land a greater share of the trade between Asian export powerhouses like South Korea and Europe. Although the two leaders also discussed bilateral trade (which amounts to only $100,000 annually), security issues and possible oil and gas pipelines through North Korea, the rail link was the summit's key achievement.

Kim's journey underscores how economists and government leaders in the region are taking another look at rail-based trade. During a May visit to Thailand, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji offered $4 billion to fund a rail link between Bangkok and Kunming. Malaysia has commissioned a gargantuan feasibility study mapping out a rail network that would link nearly all of Southeast Asia to China and Europe. China is laying between 600 and 1,000 kilometers of new track every year--a construction rate faster than America's at the height of its rail boom in the 19th century, and a pace that should vault the country past Russia and India to boast the world's second largest rail network, after the United States', by the year 2005.

Experts say the new rail links could have significant economic benefits. The Trans-Siberian Railway extension, for example, could radically alter trade across Eurasia. It would slash days or even weeks off transit times for Europe-bound exports from Asia, conceivably lowering transport costs by up to two thirds. What's more, it could also generate huge transit fees for North Korea and Russia. By some estimates, more than 500,000 containers a year could be diverted from current shipping routes once the line is extended to South Korea.

The Trans-Siberian Railway was originally built as a means to project political power in Asia. Completed in 1901, the 8,591-kilometer line linked Moscow with Vladivostok, Russia's main Pacific ...