China’s Xi holds talks with North Korea’s Kim in Beijing

BEIJING (AFP): Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un met for talks in Beijing on Thursday, state media reported, while the North Korean leader is in China on a rare foreign visit.

Kim and Russia’s Vladimir Putin flanked Xi at a massive parade of Chinese military might on Wednesday in Beijing, where underwater drones, massive missiles and laser weapons were showcased to the foreign leaders.

China is North Korea’s most important ally, their relationship forged in the bloodshed of the Korean War in the 1950s.

Chinese state media said Kim and Xi met for talks in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

China’s foreign ministry said earlier the talks would be “an in-depth exchange of views on China-DPRK relations and issues of common concern”, using the acronym for North Korea.

“China is willing to work with the DPRK to strengthen strategic communication… (and) deepen the exchange of experience in governance,” spokesman Guo Jiakun said.

Kim arrived in Beijing on Tuesday accompanied by his daughter Kim Ju Ae, his second reported trip abroad in six years and his first to China since 2019.

His attendance at the parade was the first time he was seen with Xi and Putin at the same event.

Kim enjoyed a brief bout of high-profile international diplomacy from around 2018, meeting US President Donald Trump and then South Korean president Moon Jae-in several times.

However, he withdrew from the global scene after the collapse of a summit with Trump in Hanoi in 2019.

Beijing has historically provided diplomatic, economic and political support to the secretive North, which remains under crippling international sanctions.