An olive-green North Korean train, emblazoned with a gold stripe, carried leader Kim Jong Un into China on Tuesday for a grand military parade that President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin will also attend.

Since taking power in 2011, Kim has now made nine international trips and crossed the border into South Korea twice, using his bespoke, bulletproof train for most of his travel.

AFP takes a look at what we know about Kim's preferred mode of transport:

- Family affair -

A love of locomotives runs in Kim's family.

His father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, was known to fear flying, limiting his foreign trips to overland journeys to China and Russia by armoured train.

In 2001, the elder Kim rode his train from the North Korean capital Pyongyang to Moscow, a marathon 20,000-kilo

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