By Liz Lee, Xiuhao Chen and Jack Kim
BEIJING/SEOUL, June 5 (Reuters) – China said on Friday President Xi Jinping would visit North Korea on a two-day trip from June 8, his first in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reassert ties with Pyongyang, its only formal treaty ally.
Beijing has worked to draw Pyongyang back into its fold after the COVID-19 pandemic froze exchanges and its leader, Kim Jong Un, deepened ties with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The message implicit from the Chinese side is … we are still the principal actor when it comes to North Korea,” said John Delury, a senior fellow of the Asia Society. “One of the audiences is Russia.”
Friday’s announcement by the international department of the ruling Chinese Communist Party follows Xi’s summits in Beijing last month with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Xi is visiting North Korea at the invitation of Kim, state news agency KCNA said.
Kim was a guest at a massive military parade in Beijing last September, travelling to the Chinese capital on his signature green armoured train.
Passenger train services between the capitals resumed in March, after a six-year suspension ushered in by the pandemic, while Air China later restarted flights between them.
Bookings, however, have been limited to some business travellers and exchange students, with Chinese tourists still excluded.
FIRST OVERSEAS TRIP THIS YEAR
Xi’s visit to Pyongyang will be his first overseas this year. The 72-year-old, who makes fewer trips abroad, last travelled internationally in late October to South Korea, where he also met Trump.
“At the symbolic level it is important for Xi to keep tabs on what’s going on in Pyongyang,” said Delury, who said Xi visiting both Koreas within a year would be a “big win” for the peninsula.
“There’s a kind of symmetry that the Chinese like to keep up” regarding the two Koreas, he added.
Trump, who met Kim three times in his first term, has previously said he would be open to meeting the North Korean leader again.
Since Xi became China’s top leader in 2012, he has visited North Korea once, and its southern neighbour twice. He also visited Pyongyang in 2008 as vice president, meeting its then leader Kim Jong Il, the father of the current leader.
Kim called for an “exponential” expansion of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal this week when he visited a new factory to make nuclear material, KCNA said.
Experts have linked Kim’s site visit to the impending meeting with Xi. Before his September visit to Beijing, Kim inspected plans for a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the “Hwasong-20”.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Liz Lee in Beijing, Jack Kim and Brenda Goh in Seoul; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Kate Mayberry and Clarence Fernandez)
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