North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through the station several hours before the explosion as he returned from a meeting in China. It was suggested that the explosion might have been an assassination attempt, but South Korean intelligence services believed that it was an accident. One theory is that one of the trains involved was carrying fuel from China. If the incident did involve a train collision, it has been suggested that the cause of the accident may have been a miscommunication related to the changes in train timetables due to Kim Jong-il's itinerary.