North Korea: There wasn't much to distinguish Ryongchon from the countless other towns I passed through recently. The buildings looked similar, but the comparative absence of large factories in North Korea was noticeable.
The "Dear Leader" portraits were oversized, and on top of the larger buildings in this town of perhaps 10,000. There may have been more people living there but it was a very unremarkable settlement as the train pulled through without stopping.
The grey-brown grasses, the grey-blue of the people's clothes, the depression in the eyes of the odd farmer who sat by the tracks are the impressions imprinted on this visitor's mind.
And cabbages; I saw many carts full of what looked like cabbages being hauled by locals crossing the tracks as our comfortable train moved north.
A spokesperson for Koryo Tours, a tour group bringing tourists from Beijing to Pyongyang and other sights in North Korea, said reports had "exaggerated" the number of casualties.
"The train due to Beijing came in this morning on schedule. We have a number of staff and tourists in North Korea, and they haven't heard of the figures mentioned."
A train carrying passengers from China travelled into north Korea as normal yesterday, said the spokesman who preferred not to be named.
Trains from China's central railway company and North Korea's own state railway operator make the overnight trip between Beijing and Pyongyang on alternate days.
Koryo tours brought over 100 tourists into North Korea last year. The company's business has not been effected by the blast in Ryongchon, said the spokesman.
The explosion comes at a time when North Korea has been showing tentative signs of economic reform.
The annual Pyongyang International Trade Fair is set to be held next month. Last year representatives of British, German and Scandinavian technology firms were among those with stalls at the expo.
China Central Television's news programmes last week screened rare footage from Pyongyang, enthusiastically reporting the launch of Taedonggang Beer, brewed in a plant imported whole from Britain.
The channel also ran a report on a semi-private food market recently opened in the North Korean capital.
British businessman Mr Roger Barrett travels five or six times a year to Pyongyang, where his consulting firm, Korea Business Consultants, has set up a branch office.
"The North Korean government wants to progress; it wants to bring prosperity to its people. But it's been isolated so long it hasn't got the know-how," Mr Barrett told me recently in Beijing.
Mr Barrett has spent the past six years persuading western businesses to invest in North Korea, working mostly out of an office near Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing. His company organises familiarisation trips to North Korea for business people. Another firm he co-directs, Kumsan Joint Venture Co, is developing a North Korean gold mine.
Certainly Pyongyang appears curious about economic reform. The recently-opened Kaesong tax-free manufacturing zone has several foreign, mostly Japanese, tenants, while a Thai company was last year awarded the licence to operate North Korea's first mobile phone system.
Wearing large badges picturing their current leader's father, Kim Il Sung, several North Korean diplomats joined businessmen and commercial attachés in Beijing at a St Patrick's Day reception thrown at the Irish Embassy by the Tánaiste, Ms Harney.