Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in North Korea on Monday, China’s state media reported, for a two-day state visit that marks his first trip to Pyongyang in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reinforce ties with its traditional ally that has increasingly been growing intimate with Russia.

Xi landed in Pyongyang earlier in the day at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported. He was accompanied by his wife, Peng Liyuan, Cai Qi, director of the general office of the Communist Party’s central committee, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

News footage aired by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showed Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, personally welcoming Xi and Peng at the airport in Pyongyang.

The two leaders shook hands after Xi descended from the aircraft, while North Korean children presented bouquets to the Chinese president and his wife.

A red carpet had been laid out at the airport ahead of Xi’s arrival, and large national flags of North Korea and China were displayed on the terminal building.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Xi attended a welcome ceremony held at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang.

Talks are expected to follow later in the day and are widely expected to cover economic ties and Korean Peninsula issues, as well as ways to coordinate among Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow.

Across Pyongyang, portraits of Xi and flags of both nations lined the streets in preparation for the visit, according to Chinese media reports. Banners in Korean and Chinese celebrating the two countries’ traditional friendship were also on display throughout the capital.

In a separate dispatch, China’s Xinhua News Agency unveiled footage of a group of reporters travelling to Pyongyang from Dandong in China’s Liaoning Province on a train that resumed service earlier in the year.

Xi last travelled to Pyongyang on June 20-21, 2019, his first state visit to Pyongyang since taking office in late 2012.

The two leaders most recently met in September, when Kim travelled to Beijing for China’s Victory Day celebrations, standing alongside Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade.

Kim has made five trips to Beijing to meet Xi since coming to power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011.

Xi’s upcoming North Korea trip carries symbolic weight. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between Pyongyang and Beijing, giving both sides added reasons to reaffirm their alliance and deepen economic ties.

The occasion also comes amid growing ties between Pyongyang and Moscow. Last month, North Korean troops marched for the first time alongside Russian forces in Moscow’s Victory Day parade, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Germany in World War II.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has made no effort to soften its military posture ahead of Xi’s arrival.

On Sunday, Kim’s sister Kim Yo-Jong declared the country’s nuclear status absolutely irreversible, calling it a “line of no retreat.”

Last week, the North Korean leader inspected what Pyongyang described as a newly launched nuclear materials production facility, vowing to exponentially expand the country’s arsenal. Kim also watched a naval destroyer’s navigation test and called for strengthening the country’s nuclear deterrent.

For Beijing, the visit could serve as a chance to reaffirm its influence over the Korean Peninsula. It follows Xi’s separate summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin in Beijing last month, and his attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea in October.

Against this backdrop, Xi is expected to arrive in Pyongyang with a clearer picture of where the major powers stand on Korean Peninsula affairs, offering a potential opening to restart the stalled diplomacy among Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul. (Korea Times/ Yonhap)

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Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea on Jun 8 and 9, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday (Jun 5), in his first overseas trip of the year.

“At the invitation of Kim Jong Un … Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and President of the People’s Republic of China, will pay a state visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from June 8 to 9,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said.

Xi’s visit follows his recent meetings in Beijing with both United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May.

Confirmation of his trip comes after the prospect had surfaced in recent weeks, following media reports and sightings of a Chinese delegation in Pyongyang.

Analysts previously told CNA that Xi’s visit to Pyongyang would signal Beijing’s intent to recalibrate influence over North Korea and the wider Korean Peninsula.

Xi last visited North Korea in 2019, where he met with North Korean leader Kim and received full military honours.

Meanwhile, Kim visited China last September to attend a military parade that marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. He met with Xi during the visit. (CNA)

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North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea on Wednesday in its second launch event in two days, South Korea’s military said, hours after a senior North Korean official released crude insults against Seoul’s hopes for warmer relations.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles lifted off from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area and flew about 240 kilometres (150 miles) each in a direction toward the North’s eastern waters. It said South Korea maintains a readiness to repel any provocations by North Korea under a solid military alliance with the United States.

The South Korean military said it had also detected the launch of an unidentified projectile around North Korea’s capital region on Tuesday. It said South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities were analyzing details of Tuesday’s launch.

South Korean media reported the previous projectile, also likely a ballistic missile, disappeared from South Korean military radars after displaying an abnormal development in the initial launch stage. This indicated the launch ended in failure, according to the reports.

The back-to-back launches came after North Korea made it clear that it has no intentions of improving ties with South Korea, whose liberal government has steadfastly expressed its hopes to restore long-dormant dialogue.

On Tuesday night, Jang Kum Chol, first vice minister at Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry, said South Korea would always remain the North’s “most hostile enemy state.” He derided South Korea as “world-startling fools” engaged in wishful thinking over a recent statement by Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

After South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed regret over alleged civilian drone flights into North Korea, Kim Yo Jong late Monday praised him for what she called honesty and courage, but reiterated a threat to retaliate if such flights recur. South Korean officials responded by describing Kim Yo Jong’s statement as meaningful progress in relations.

Jang said her statement was intended as a warning. He cited Kim Yo Jong as calling South Korea “the dogs affected by mange that blindly bark to the tune of neighboring dogs” as she criticized it for recently co-sponsoring of a U.N. human rights resolution on the North’s purported human rights violations.

North Korea has refused to return to talks with South Korea and the U.S. and pushed to expand its nuclear arsenal since Kim Jong Un’s diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed in 2019. In a ruling Workers’ Party congress in February, Kim Jong Un threatened to destroy South Korea, if provoked. He left open the door for dialogue with Trump but urged Washington to drop demands for the North’s nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks.

Earlier this week, North Korea said Kim Jong Un had observed a test of an upgraded solid-fuel engine for weapons and called it a significant development boosting his country’s strategic military arsenal.

Missiles with built-in solid propellants are easier to move and conceal their launches than liquid-fuel weapons, which in general must be fueled before liftoffs and cannot last long.

South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Monday the engine test was likely related to an effort to build a more powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that can carry multiple nuclear warheads, according to lawmakers who attended the meeting.

Experts say North Korea needs multi-warhead missiles to penetrate through U.S. missile defenses, but doubts the country has mastered a technology needed to acquire such a weapon. (AP)

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North Korea has confirmed for the first time that it sent troops to Russia to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine, and that its forces had contributed to taking back Russian territory held by Ukraine’s military in the Kursk region.

In a statement provided to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday, the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party said that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had sent troops into combat alongside Russian forces as part of a mutual defence treaty between Moscow and Pyongyang.

The KCNA quoted Kim as saying that soldiers were deployed to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces”.

“They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

North Korea “regards it as an honour to have an alliance with such a powerful state as the Russian Federation”, KCNA said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty in June last year, committing the two countries to come to each other’s assistance, militarily, in the event of war.

According to South Korea’s official Yonhap News Agency, Kim also said that a monument would be built soon in the capital, Pyongyang, to honour those who had fought against Ukraine.

“Flowers praying for immortality will be placed before the tombstones of the fallen soldiers, effectively acknowledging troops killed in combat,” Yonhap reports, noting that North Korea had so far remained silent about the thousands of soldiers it had sent to Russia in October.

Ukrainian officials said earlier this year that some 14,000 North Koreans were deployed against its forces, including 3,000 reinforcements who were sent to replace the North Koreans’ early battlefield losses.

Lacking armoured vehicles and unfamiliar with drone warfare, the North Koreans had taken heavy casualties early on in fighting but adapted quickly, according to reports, and later contributed to reclaiming Russia’s Kursk region from occupying Ukrainian forces.

Estimates of the casualty rate among North Korean forces fighting for Russia have varied widely.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in January that about 300 North Korean soldiers were killed in combat and another 2,700 had been injured.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 4,000, while the United States estimated a lower figure of about 1,200 casualties.

North Korea’s statement follows Russia’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, on Saturday hailing the “heroism” of the North Korean soldiers, who he said “provided significant assistance in defeating the group of Ukrainian armed forces”, while reporting to Putin that Kursk had been regained from Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s General Staff quickly countered, saying that its defensive operation in certain areas in Kursk was continuing.

The US State Department said in a statement on Sunday evening that North Korea and other “third countries” had “perpetuated” Russia’s war on Ukraine and that it must end, as should Moscow’s support for Pyongyang. (Al Jazeera)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has landed in North Korea for a rare visit, his first visit in 24 years, that signals the two countries’ deepening alignment and Moscow’s need to source weapons from Pyongyang to sustain its war on Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally greeted Putin at the plane ramp as he arrived in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time, video footage of his arrival showed.

State media RIA reported that the two leaders talked animatedly with each other for several minutes before reaching their motorcade.

The pair then rode together to the Kumsusan State Guest House where Putin will be staying, according to North Korean state media KCNA, and the two leaders “exchanged their pent-up innermost thoughts and opened their minds to more surely develop (North Korea-Russia) relations in conformity with the common desire and will of the peoples of the two countries.”

After arriving at the guesthouse, they held a “friendly chat,” KCNA added.

The streets of Pyongyang were decked out with Russian flags and posters of Putin ahead of his first visit to the country since 2000. This week’s visit is a rare overseas trip for Putin since he launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and a key moment for Kim, who has not hosted another world leader in his politically isolated country since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Putin’s visit will be closely watched across the world and is expected to cement further the burgeoning partnership between the two powers that is founded on their shared animosity toward the West and driven by Moscow’s need for munitions for its war in Ukraine.

Following his visit to North Korea, Putin is scheduled to travel to Hanoi in a display of Communist-governed Vietnam’s ties to Russia that is likely to rankle the United States.

Putin’s trip to North Korea will have a “very eventful” agenda, his aide Yuri Ushakov said during a press conference Monday. Both leaders plan to sign a new strategic partnership, Ushakov said.

Ushakov insisted the agreement is not provocative or aimed against other countries, but is meant to ensure greater stability in northeast Asia. He said the new agreement will replace documents signed between Moscow and Pyongyang in 1961, 2000 and 2001.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies showed preparations for a large parade in Pyongyang’s central square. One image was of a grandstand being constructed on the eastern side of Kim Il Sung Square, the site where all major parades in North Korea are held. In an earlier image, taken on June 5, North Koreans can be seen practicing marching formations.

US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday the Biden administration wasn’t “concerned about the trip” itself, but added, “What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between these two countries.”

The US, South Korea and other countries have accused North Korea of providing substantial military aid to Russia’s war effort in recent months, while observers have raised concerns that Moscow may be violating international sanctions to aid Pyongyang’s development of its nascent military satellite program. Both countries have denied North Korean arms exports.

Putin’s trip reciprocates one Kim made last September, when the North Korean leader traveled in his armored train to Russia’s far eastern region, for a visit that included stops at a factory that produces fighter jets and a rocket-launch facility.

It also comes as tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula amid heightened international concern about the North Korean leader’s intentions as he ramped up bellicose language and scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea.

South Korea fired warning shots on Tuesday after North Korean soldiers working in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas briefly crossed into the South, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second incident of its kind in the last two weeks. (CNN)

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