Radio Free Asia (RFA) says the amount of cargo transported by rail between North Korea and Russia has increased more than nine times this year, compared to last year.
   
Quoting Russia’s state-run railway operator Russian Railways, RFA reported that 887-point-five thousand tons of cargo was transported through a railway linking North Korea’s Rajin and Russia’s Khasan between January and July, up nine-point-five times from the same period last year.
 
Most of the freight was coal produced in Siberia. From January to July, 832-thousand tons of coal was shipped to South Korea and China via the North’s Rajin port. The North Korean-Russian railway system was used 16 times to transport coal in the first half of the year.
   
In 2013, North Korea and Russia completed a modernization project on the railway between Rajin and Khasan.