Kim crossed via a major border bridge that only officially opened last week — 12 years after its completion — deepening economic ties between China and diplomatically isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea.
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears to have arrived on an unannounced visit to the Chinese border city of Dandong, a government source in Seoul and South Korean media said on Saturday.
Kim crossed via a major border bridge that only officially opened last week — 12 years after its completion — deepening economic ties between China and diplomatically isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea.
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Neither North Korea nor China disclosed Kim’s visit in advance. South Korean lawmaker Youn Kun-young said Kim was “understood” to have met Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Saturday.
South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party said Youn had been briefed that Kim was likely to return home later the same day.
China is North Korea’s largest trading partner and a vital source of diplomatic, economic and political support for Pyongyang, although ties have not always been smooth.
The Yonhap news agency first reported Kim’s arrival, citing an unidentified South Korean government source.
A separate government source told AFP that the North Korean leader appeared to have crossed into China via the recently opened New Yalu River Bridge.
Lawmaker Youn said he had been briefed on Friday about the likely visit.
The trip’s purpose was unclear, but it could send a “positive signal” about a possible US-North Korea summit, he said in a statement sent to AFP.
World leaders are preparing for November’s APEC summit in China’s Shenzhen, where it has been speculated that Kim may meet US President Donald Trump.
Neither the Chinese foreign ministry nor the North Korean embassy in Beijing immediately responded to AFP’s requests for comment on Saturday.
South Korea’s government said it could not confirm Kim’s itinerary in China.
The New Yalu River Bridge was completed in 2014 but its opening was delayed due to a lack of connecting roads and customs facilities on the North Korean side, according to South Korean news reports.
Its opening came a little more than a month after North Korea and Russia opened their first road bridge.
– North-South tensions –
By meeting Li in Dandong, Kim “may have sought to reaffirm the economic cooperation agreed during Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea” earlier this year, and “press China to move more quickly on those commitments”, Yang Moo-jin, former president of the South’s University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.
“He may also have sought Beijing’s active support and cooperation ahead of a possible summit with Trump in Shenzhen.”
Hours before Yonhap’s report, North Korea’s state media said he had urged his military at a two-day meeting of company commanders in Pyongyang to train to become the strongest in the world.
Kim’s call for what he dubbed a “Korean-style military revolution” came the same week Seoul’s military proposed talks to clarify the border after an explosion inside the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) further strained inter-Korean ties.
Seoul’s military proposed the talks on Friday after it blamed the blast, which injured South Korean soldiers, on North Korean landmines. Pyongyang strongly rejects the claim.
North Korea has not responded to the proposal and previously rejected the South’s demand for an apology over the explosion.
The countries remain technically at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
– ‘Implicit acceptance’ –
Despite long-running UN sanctions, North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear-armed state in law, with its regime repeatedly declaring its atomic arsenal permanent and irreversible.
South Korea’s dovish President Lee Jae Myung — who has repeatedly offered Pyongyang talks without preconditions — suggested in September that Washington seek a freeze, rather than the immediate elimination, of its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
Critics say such an approach risks tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear-armed state while allowing Pyongyang to win sanctions relief without giving up its arsenal.
Analysts say China has also appeared to move towards implicit acceptance.
Kim hosted Xi in Pyongyang in June, soon after Xi held back-to-back summits in Beijing with Trump and Putin.
Neither Pyongyang nor Beijing mentioned North Korean denuclearisation in their official statements — an omission experts saw as a sign of China’s tacit consent.