A senior North Korean official on Tuesday arrived in Beijing for talks between his country and China, whose ties are formally close, but have eroded recently because of the North’s nuclear weapons program.
North Korea’s state-run Central News Agency reported early yesterday that the official, Ri Su-yong, told the Chinese that it was the “permanent” policy of the North to try to expand its nuclear arsenal while striving to rebuild its economy.
Hours before Ri’s arrival, North Korea tried unsuccessfully to fire an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile, the fourth failed attempt in two months, according to the Yonhap news agency in South Korea.
Photo: EPA
Ri, a former minister of foreign affairs who was recently promoted to the Politburo, came to discuss the recent congress in Pyongyang of the Workers’ Party, said a former senior Chinese official familiar with the visit, as well as with North Korea. The official declined to be identified, given the sensitivity of the matter.
The Workers’ Party congress early last month sought to cement the power of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, with whom Ri is considered close. Ri was North Korea’s ambassador to Switzerland at the time Kim attended a boarding school there, North Korea experts have said.
Ri’s remarks were made during a meeting Chinese International Liaison Department of the Communist Party head Song Tao (宋濤).
The North Korean news agency said Ri had “stressed” that it was the Workers’ Party’s “principled” stance to stick loyally to Kim’s policy, known as byungjin, as a “permanent strategic line” and use it as a base to “defend peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.”
Although the byungjin policy was hardly new, the meeting between Ri and Song was significant in that North Korea formally told China through a high-level governmental channel that it had no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons program.
The news agency quoted Song as saying that the Chinese Communist Party and government supported North Korea’s pursuit of “a path to development that suits its reality.”
It did not specify what Song said about the North’s nuclear weapons program.
Ri’s visit continued efforts by Kim to court China, the North’s main trading partner and benefactor, as the country feels the effects of UN sanctions.
Still, China has been frustrated enough by the North’s continued testing of nuclear weapons and launching of missiles that it agreed to the international sanctions in March, and Beijing seemed unlikely to offer substantial support to the North during Ri’s visit.
The visit left open whether Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who also serves as secretary-general of the party, would agree to see him.
However, the former Chinese official said he thought it unlikely that Xi would meet with the North Korean visitor.
Kim might have ordered Tuesday’s missile test to coincide with Ri’s visit, as a way of signaling to the Chinese that he would continue to cause trouble if Beijing did not help North Korea, former US Department of State senior official in charge of North Korea affairs Evans Revere said.
Such a tactic might not be advised given that China has shown increasing impatience with North Korea, Revere said.
Even so, “over the years, the North Koreans have shown themselves nothing if not skillful in manipulating the Chinese,” he added.
The attempted missile launch would almost certainly rule out an audience with Xi, Renmin University associate professor of international relations Cheng Xiaohe (成曉河) said.
“China would seem without principle if he is allowed to meet with President Xi after they launched that missile,” Cheng said.
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