North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had talks with a Chinese envoy in Pyongyang yesterday, Chinese state media said, his first known meeting with a senior foreign visitor since a reported stroke in August.
Kim met with Wang Jiarui (王家瑞), a senior official with China’s ruling Communist Party, Xinhua news agency said in a brief dispatch.
North Korea’s state media has not reported any meetings between the 66-year-old Kim and foreign visitors since his illness.
PHOTO: AP
US and South Korean officials have said he suffered a stroke last August but Seoul officials say he made a good recovery and remains in control of the hardline communist state.
Yesterday’s meeting could offer evidence Kim is well enough to run the country and make decisions about its nuclear weapons program.
Since Kim’s reported stroke, the Stalinist nation’s media has published dozens of undated photos of him inspecting military installations or factories in an apparent attempt to show he is fit and in control.
Most North Korean newspaper reports of appearances by Kim have also been undated.
The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported recently that Kim had visited the Wonsan Youth Power Station on Jan. 6, although there was no independent confirmation the visit had taken place.
Wang was in North Korea at the start of a year during which the two nations will mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations.
However, outside observers said it was more significant that Wang met Kim just days after US President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Paik Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank, told Yonhap news agency this week that Wang was expected to deliver a message from Beijing.
The message is “that it is much more optimistic with the Obama administration than Bush’s, and that it’d be in North Korea’s interest to cooperate in the nuclear negotiations,” Paik said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in