Russian Coking Coal Arrives in South Korea Via North Korea

Mined in western Siberia, the coal was transported to Russia’s border town of Khasan, according to Arirang News. The supplies were then transported to the North Korean port city of Rajin, via a roughly 50-km-long cross-border railway. The coal then left Rajin on a Chinese ship bound for Pohang. This is the first batch of a test-run coal shipment sent as part of the so-called Rajin-Khasan project, a trilateral trade agreement among both Koreas and Russia. The project was proposed at a South Korea-Russia summit in Seoul last year. Currently, POSCO imports its Russian coal by ship through Vladivostok, but this new route could cut the company’s coal import costs by up to 15%.