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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gets on his official airplane Chammae-1 after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Dalian in China’s Liaoning Province on May 7-8. (Korea Central News Agency

How will North Korean leader Kim Jong-un travel the 4,700km to Singapore, where the North Korea-US summit will be taking place on June 12? Since a train journey from North Korea to Singapore is out of the question, attention is focusing on Kim’s official airplane, Chammae-1 (meaning goshawk, North Korea’s national bird).

On May 7, Kim flew Chammae-1 to Dalian in China’s Liaoning Province to hold his second summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Pyongyang and Dalian are about 360km apart in a direct line. Chammae-1, a souped-up IL-62M of Soviet manufacture, is equipped with four engines, which gives it a maximum flight distance of 9,000-10,000km. These specifications make it fully capable of reaching Singapore, which is about 4,700km away from Pyongyang.

But safety concerns have also been raised since Kim’s jet is old and has never attempted a long flight before. The IL-62M, an upgraded version of the IL-62 model that was developed in 1967, entered production in 1975 and was discontinued in 1995.

“[Chammae-1] is presumed to have been manufactured in 1985, and provided that it’s in good repair, it will have no problem flying to Singapore. But since it has no experience with long-distance flight and may not have been serviced properly, it probably presents a dilemma [for North Korea],” said a source in the South Korean government.

In Nov. 2014, Choe Ryong-hae, vice chairman of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), was reportedly on a flight to Russia as a special envoy for Kim Jong-un when a problem with his aircraft forced him to return to Pyongyang and restart his journey. The aircraft that Choe and his party were on was apparently also an IL-62. This is leading to speculation that Kim may have a stopover in China or borrow a large charter plane from China.

But experts on inter-Korean relations dismissed such speculation. “Borrowing [a charter plane] from China is not an option for security reasons. North Korea appears to have concluded that it is possible [to fly on Kim’s personal jet] after considering the jet’s range and its state of repair,” said Cho Sung-ryul, senior research fellow for the Institute for National Security.

Another question is whether Kim will bring his personal automobile with him. When he visited Dalian, his automobile was carried by a transport jet with Air Koryo (IL-76). But this transport jet’s short range means it would have to make a stopover in China or some other country.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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