Biography|Lee Yong-bae — The Berlin Hall Where Rotem's Hydrogen Tram Stood in 2024

On 24 September 2024 the InnoTrans fair opened at Messe Berlin in Westend.

Hyundai Rotem took a stand and rolled out a hydrogen tram built for Daejeon's planned Line 2.

Lee Yong-bae was on the floor.

Egypt's transport minister, Kamel al-Wazir, walked the stand that day and sat with Lee and two Rotem export officers to talk signals work and a local train plant due to start in the following year.

The Guru reported the meeting from Egyptian government and SIS notes dated 24 September local time.

The hardware in the hall was the same family of car Rotem had contracted to Daejeon that July: a wireless tram meant to run 38.8 kilometres without overhead wire, thirty-four sets on the Korean order.

Commons holds a 24 September photograph of that Daejeon-bound car on the InnoTrans track, released under CC BY-SA by the photographer Georgr.

The pin is the Berlin exhibition ground, Halenseestrasse, not a factory gate in Changwon.

Lee had by then been Rotem's registered chief for four and a half years.

The emergency language of January 2020 was no longer the story the company took abroad.

What it took abroad was a hydrogen car and a minister who already had Rotem building in Egypt.

Messe Berlin is a working trade ground.

Halls go up and come down around the radio tower.

A visitor in late September of an even year will find InnoTrans filling those halls with trains on temporary track.

Lee's 2024 appearance is one documented hour in that cycle: the president of a Changwon builder standing next to a car his plant had made, in a German hall, with a buyer already on the books.

Photo: Georgr, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Daejeon hydrogen tram built by Hyundai Rotem, InnoTrans, 24 September 2024.