North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made an unannounced trip to China on the 24th. Kim has met Chinese President Xi Jinping on each of his five previous visits to the country. Attention is on whether the two leaders will meet again, about four months after Xi's state visit to Pyongyang in June. A ruling party official said Kim appeared set to wrap up the trip and return home the same day.
Kim crossed the New Yalu River Bridge and arrived in Dandong, in China's Liaoning province, according to South Korea's Ministry of Unification and other sources. It was his first trip to China in one year and one month, since he attended the 80th anniversary of China's victory in World War II in Beijing in September last year. China marks Oct. 25 each year as the date of its first victory after entering the Korean War. Because Kim arrived a day before the 25th, observers said his schedule may include events tied to the war.
Kim has met Xi on every trip to China since taking power in 2011. If talks take place this time, it would be their first meeting in about four months, following Xi's state visit to North Korea in June. In a phone call with Yonhap News Agency, however, the ruling party official raised the possibility that Kim would return home the same day. "Kim Jong-un's return home today looks almost certain," the official said. "This will be a very short visit," the official was quoted as saying. "What matters is whom he meets in China, and we will have to wait and see on that."
The New Yalu River Bridge that Kim crossed is a four-lane, vehicles-only bridge linking Dandong with Sinuiju in North Korea's North Pyongan province. It was completed in 2014, but its opening was delayed because connecting roads and customs facilities on the North Korean side were not in place. It opened on the 15th of this month. With the overland trade route between North Korea and China now open, following the opening of a Tumen River road bridge between North Korea and Russia last month, some have raised concerns that United Nations sanctions on the North could be effectively neutralized.
North Korea is drawing closer to China and Russia while maintaining its confrontational stance toward South Korea. Kim, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin watched a military parade together in Beijing in September last year. With Xi's trip to Pyongyang this year now followed by Kim's trip to China, exchanges between the two countries appear to be expanding.
The trip also comes amid speculation about Kim's death, and appears in part to dispel it. The National Intelligence Service recently reported to ruling and opposition lawmakers on the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee that the speculation was untrue, according to sources. The NIS was also said to have briefed committee liaisons from both parties at that time on the possibility of Kim traveling to China.