A North Korean official's remarks about his country's trans-Siberian railway project with Russia have drawn attention as they were reported through North Korean weekly Tongil Sinbo last week.
 
In the report, Kim Chol-ho, deputy director of international relations at the North’s railway ministry, said the railway project was only the first phase of building a transcontinental railway connecting the two Koreas, Russia and the rest of Europe.
 
Kim said the 20-year project for modernizing more than three-thousand kilometers of the North’s railroads is part of a cooperation project to implement the 2001 Moscow Declaration that called for a trans-Siberia railway from South Korea. 
 
Named Pobeda, or victory in Russian, the project involves Mostovik, a Russian construction company. Around 25 billion dollars is expected to be injected into the project.