Dreaming Eurasia railroad line that runs across Siberia

The first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. was constructed between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts on May 10, 1869. The Central Pacific Railroad Company and the Union Pacific Railroad Company connected rail lines in Promontory, Utah, crossing vast plain and desert. This 2,826 km-long railroad line connects Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento, California. Thanks to the seven years’ construction, transcontinental travel cost dropped from 1,000 U.S. dollars to 150 dollars.

The first transcontinental express train in Europe was "Orient Express" that started operation in 1883. The train, which became famed for Agatha Christie’s novel ‘Murder on the Orient Express," runs over 2,740 kilometers. A romantic railway travel on the Orient Express from Paris in France to Istanbul in Turkey was popular among the European upper class in the 1930s. The train trip lost its popularity in 1977 when travel via car and airplane has become common.

Another transcontinental railroad project is drawing attention. It is the Eurasia rail line that starts in Busan, South Korea, passing through North Korea and Siberia, and reaches Europe. If the back-bone logistics system is restored to connect the European and the Asian continents like a spider web, the Eurasia railroad line will provide vitality to the existing continental railroads such as Trans-Siberian Railway, Trans China Railway and Trans Mongolian Railway and become the world’s longest "Iron Silk-road." This railway is a core agenda in the "Eurasia Initiative" of the President Park Geun-hye administration, which aims to combine Eurasia as a single economic community. Of course, the first step toward this goal is to connect the broken railroad lines between South and North Koreas.

During his visit to South Korea to attend "2015 Eurasia Transportation Energy International Conference," Russian Far East Development Minister Alexander Galushka offered to have a tripartite talks among South Korea, North Korea and Russia in August. South Koreans traveled by railways passing through North Korea to China and Russia in the period of Japanese colonial rule. However, after gaining independence from Japan, the inter-Korean railways were disconnected and South Korea became isolated like an island. When will it become a reality to re-establish railways between the two Koreas and travel by a train that runs across the Siberia plain where "white birch trees are standing in line" (quoted from South Korean poet Choi Ha-rim’s poem "Siberia Engraving 1") to reach Europe?