It was initially supposed it was train cars with gas and petroleum products. Then It might have been dynamite. Now it might have been fertilizer.

We in the west still don’t know.
We don’t know how many people are dead.
We don’t know how many are injured.
Casuality figures have varied from three thousand, to fifty-four to one hundred fifty four.

North Korea has taken some unprecedented steps in the wake of Thursday’s explosion in a train station near the border of China.

North Korea is a profoundly secretive country where only 100 westerners reside, and less than 2 thousand tourists are allowed in a year.
The media is completely government controlled.

But the country is ever so slowly changing. Pyongyang’s best hotel, two 45-storey towers topped off with a revolving restaurant, does now provide BBC World - although only for foreign visitors. The compulsory guides that are assigned to foreign visitors are more open than ever. Admittedly it’s from a rather low starting point, but they now admit there was a famine in 1995 and there is not enough electricity to keep homes warm in winter. One guide told me last week that some Koreans might be gay - something that was strenuously denied a year ago.

This relative openness is reflected in the government’s reaction to the train crash. The regime’s formal request for help from the international community could have far-reaching ramifications. As with Chernobyl almost 20 years ago, the fall-out from the Ryongchon train crash could help prise open a secretive, shut-off society. Emergency relief may not come with strings, but it certainly increases dialogue.