AP This is the 1950 to Pyongyang

“LET the Iron Horse ride again,” said the sign on the front of the 1940s locomotive, the last to ply the route between Seoul and Pyongyang before the Korean war. This week, South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung inaugurated work on rebuilding the 320km (200-mile) link, and the road that used to run alongside it.

Train spotters had better wait a while before booking their tickets. Though North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, agreed to the restoration of the rail link when he met the South's Mr Kim in June, he failed to send any officials to the ceremony. His government has so far refused to make any promises about when it will start work clearing the hundreds of thousands of mines on its own side of the border. Nor has the North given any indication of what freight it will allow to pass through in transit to other countries and how much it might be inclined to charge South Korea for such privileges. As for passengers, they are not even being discussed.

Nor has anyone yet broached the question of who might pay for upgrading the North's track to take the mountain of exports that the South hopes to send via North Korea, China and the trans-Siberian railway on to Europe. Even the billowing steam, it turned out, was fake: no one had dared stoke up the pre-war boiler.

Still, train diplomacy has a good pedigree in Asia. In 1996, after 17 years of icy hostility following the brief but bloody war between China and Vietnam, the rail crossing at Lang Son, previously and now again called the Friendship Gate, was re-opened. It has proved a milestone in bettering relations between the ancient rivals.

On the Korean peninsula, normalisation continues to proceed, if in fits and starts. Next week, the two countries' defence ministers are to meet. Originally, the plan had been for them to assemble on neutral soil in Hong Kong, but that was proving tricky to arrange. So the meeting will now take place on Cheju, a South Korean island.