Making Solid Tracks: North Korea’s Railway Connections with China and Russia

Should inter-Korean cooperation result in the re-joining of North and South Korea’s railways, it could connect the peninsula through China and Russia to a rail network that spans Eurasia. President Moon has been building on South Korea’s longstanding, albeit intermittent, conversations and aspirational cooperation commitments with China and Russia to plan for future integration. However, once the Korean peninsula’s railways are reconnected, a long and costly modernization process will be necessary to fully integrate the systems in a commercially viable way, complicating the future of these potentially transformative links.