Trains are due to cross the Cold War frontier between North and South Korea today for the first time in 56 years, a symbolic act of reunification and a step towards the dream of continuous railway travel between Seoul and London.

Two five-carriage trains, one from each side, are expected to cross the “demilitarised zone”, the first since the Korean War. One train will run along a track in the west of the peninsula and the other in the east. The journey, which will be made by 150 Korean VIPs, is intended to build confidence between the two Koreas, although it is unclear when a regular service will resume.

“The test operation of trains is an epochal event that will reconnect the severed blood vessels of our nation,” said Lee Jae Joung, South Korea’s Minister for Unification. “That will help the Korean peninsula overcome its division and Cold War confrontation . . . to open a new era of reconciliation, coexistence and co-prosperity.”

The railway lines were physically rejoined in 2003 but it has taken four years to overcome the suspicion and hostility between the two sides to enable the trains to make the journey. It was supposed to have happened last year but the crossing was called off at the last minute by the North Koreans who said that reopening a railway without reducing military tension was “as silly as planting beans in a minefield”.

In the west, a South Korean train will make the 17 mile journey between Munsan and the industrial city of Kaesong in the North. On the east coast, a North Korean train will travel south from Kumgangsan — the Diamond Mountains — a resort and national park which has been opened as a tourist destination for South Koreans.

The last time a train crossed the border was New Year’s Eve, 1950, when refugees fleeing the Chinese advance from the North were stopped at the border and their locomotive disabled. A model of it stands at the Korea Railway Museum with a plaque bearing the words: “The iron horse wants to run.” One of the conductors from that last journey will make the crossing today.

Apart from its symbolic and historic significance, the reconnection of the severed rail artery has great economic potential. Since the Second World War, the division of the peninsula has deprived South Korea and its booming economy of a land connection with the rest of Asia, making it an island surrounded by water on three sides and a Stalinist enemy on the fourth.

If that barrier were removed the South would be connected with the Iron Silk Road, a network of railways that would connect the port city of Pusan, on the country’s southern coast, with western Europe, and halving the time taken to transport freight by sea.

More importantly the South would have direct access to its biggest trading partner, China. It would bring revenue to the North, and might encourage the xenophobic state to engage with the outside world.

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