Confusion surrounded a North Korean visit to China yesterday, as media in South Korea said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had crossed the border, contradicting earlier reports that his son and heir apparent Kim Jong-un had traveled there.
South Korea’s YTN and MBC television quoted South Korean presidential and government sources as saying the 69-year-old leader had entered China by train yesterday morning.
Earlier, the same broadcasters reported it was Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, who arrived by train in Tumen, in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin. A presidential source would not confirm the later reports.
It would be the North Korean leader’s third visit to China inside the past 12 months.
North Korea is preparing for a third generation of Kim family rule, with the inexperienced Kim Jong-un poised to take over from his father as the autocratic state’s next leader.
Analysts say the succession process, hastened last September because of Kim Jong-il’s poor health, has probably slowed down in recent months as the 69-year-old leader’s condition appears to be improving.
South Korea’s spy agency had been expecting a visit for months. Media reports said the trip would likely focus on developing economic ties between the neighbors and could involve visits to joint projects on their border.
Paik Hak-soon, director of the Center for North Korean studies at Sejong Institute in South Korea, said Kim Jong-un’s trip was politically and economically motivated.
“First it is meant to demonstrate and establish himself as the successor. Secondly, he needs to make achievements in the economic area because of the North’s economic difficulties,” he said.
The Chosun Ilbo Web site reported earlier yesterday that either Kim Jong-il or his son could attend a groundbreaking ceremony for two development projects on the North Korea-China border at the end of the month.
A construction project developing an island called Hwanggumpyong in the lower reaches of the Tumen River starts on Saturday next week and construction of roads connecting Hunchun in China and Rajin-Sonbong in North Korea on May 30, the paper said.
Chinese and South Korean government officials could not immediately confirm the visit.
North Korea has dramatically increased its economic cooperation with China over the past two years to circumvent international sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests in 2009.
Last year, trade between China and North Korea was worth US$3.5 billion, up 29.6 percent from 2009, according to Chinese customs statistics. China’s imports from North Korea last year grew by 50.6 percent to US$1.2 billion and its -exports to North Korea grew 20.8 percent to US$2.3 billion.
North Korea has been further squeezed by tougher sanctions by South Korea and the US following two attacks on the peninsula last year which killed 50 South Koreans.
Zhang Liangui (張蓮桂), an expert on North Korea at the Central Party School in Beijing which trains Chinese officials, said that if confirmed, Kim Jong-un’s trip was meant to extract more aid and support from China.
However, Zhang said Kim Jong-un would not be the one to hammer out specifics of any new agreements with China.
“Kim Jong-un wouldn’t understand that kind of thing. He wouldn’t have deciding authority over that either,” Zhang said.
The youngest of the leader’s three sons, little is known about Kim Jong-un, not even his age. He was most likely born in 1984.
Educated in Switzerland, he is thought to speak English and German, and bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather, the North’s founder, Kim Il-sung.
The Chosun Ilbo reported that Kim was accompanied by his uncle and minder, Jang Song-thaek, who was last year promoted to the powerful National Defense Commission.
Many analysts took Jang’s promotion to be an attempt to establish a mechanism for the eventual succession, with Jang as regent, while his nephew establishes himself in power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing