Vietnam bans traffic on Kim Jong-un’s possible route to summit with Donald Trump in Hanoi
- Main 170km motorway from checkpoint on China border to Vietnamese city will be closed to traffic at certain times on Monday and Tuesday
Vietnam has announced an unprecedented traffic ban along a possible arrival route of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before his second summit with President Donald Trump in Hanoi next week, state media reported.
The Communist Party’s Nhan Dan newspaper late on Friday quoted Vietnam’s Department of Roads as saying the ban will first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170-km (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7pm on Monday to 2pm on Tuesday, followed by a complete ban on Tuesday on all vehicles from 6am to 2pm.
The summit is slated for Wednesday and Thursday.
It gave no other details. The move implies that Kim may take a train and disembark at the Dong Dang railway station and proceed by car to Hanoi.
It is not known if he will travel by train from Pyongyang via China or fly to a nearby Chinese city. Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret.
The People’s Committee in Lang Son province, where the Dong Dang railway station is located, issued a statement Friday instructing the road operator to clean the stretch of the highway and suspend road works among other things to serve “a political task” on February 24-28.