BEIJING — It had the trappings of a historic summit — a mysterious train, a motorbike convoy, a military welcome, and extraordinary displays of flowers and flags.
This week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, his first known trip abroad since he assumed control of the isolated state in 2011 and his first meeting with another head of state.
Kim, 34, said he is “willing to hold dialogue with the United States,” according to China’s official New China News Agency, adding that his country could potentially denuclearize “if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts in good faith (and) create a peaceful and stable atmosphere.”
The meeting highlighted a fraught high-wire act for both China and North Korea in advance of Kim’s planned meetings with South Korean and U.S. leaders this spring.
Kim is expected to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April and with President Donald Trump in May. Experts say that he is likely eager to shore up support from China, Pyongyang’s main trading partner and ally, for additional leverage in those discussions. He may also want to drive a wedge between the U.S. and China, which have in the past year joined forces to implement draconian sanctions on Pyongyang.
China, meanwhile, is striving to remain central to discussions, experts say — it’s anxious that losing a place at the table could carry vast consequences for its national security. Beijing is about 500 miles from Pyongyang, and does not want a war in its backyard.
“What does Kim Jong Un want? Let’s be clear. He wants to break what appears to be a united front between China and the U.S. on the North Korea issue,” said Andrei Lankov, director of the research firm Korea Risk Group and a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul.
“Kim has likely made a lot of promises, not all of which are going to be kept, in order to prove to his Chinese hosts that it’s in Chinese interests not to be harsh to North Korea,” he continued. “I can imagine him making promises to behave himself for a while, at least as long as Trump is in the White House. But it’s also possible that he’ll try to terrify China by the increasingly likely prospect of an American military operation in Korea.”
“We are now heading into an extremely complicated stage of diplomacy and negotiations,” Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, said in an email. “Trump needs to get good and competent people in place to not only do the internal strategic thinking and advise the president, but to ensure that in our external diplomacy there is cohesion. The worst outcome would be for (North Korea) to begin driving wedges between the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia to try to gain advantages.”
This week’s meetings unfolded in absolute secrecy. Speculation had swirled that Kim was in Beijing on Monday night, when a mysterious, armored North Korean train arrived in the Chinese capital (it left on Tuesday afternoon). Chinese state media first reported the visit on Wednesday, and said that it lasted from Sunday to Wednesday, without explaining the discrepancy.
The Chinese government briefed the White House about Kim’s visit on Tuesday, according to a statement by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The United States remains in close contact with our allies South Korea and Japan,” she said. “We see this development as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea.”
Chinese and North Korean media both made prominent shows of the visit, with the New China News Agency publishing a 2,646-word write-up and North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun running a photo from the meeting on its front page.
The agencies showed photos of Kim and Xi shaking hands against a backdrop of North Korean and Chinese flags; posing with their wives, Ri Sol Ju and Peng Liyuan; toasting at a banquet; and speaking with other officials at the Great Hall of the People, a lush-carpeted meeting hall in Beijing.
“The luncheon hall where Kim Jong Un and Ri Sol Ju sat face to face with Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan was overflowing with a harmonious and intimate atmosphere from its beginning to the end,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.
China and North Korea enjoy a strong historical bond, with their Communist roots and their alliance during the Korean War of 1950-‘53. Yet their relations have soured, especially throughout last year, as Pyongyang tested more than two dozen missiles and, in September, a nuclear bomb. Beijing fears nothing more than instability, and has repeatedly warned Pyongyang over its provocations.
Trump and the United Nations have imposed several rounds of sanctions on the already-isolated country — and China, breaking with years of precedent, has largely enforced them, sharply limiting exports of North Korean goods to China.
Yet Kim has made several gestures in recent months to defuse long-simmering tensions. Last month, North Korea sent a delegation, led by Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, to the Winter Olympics in South Korea. The charm offensive paved the way to talks with South Korean officials, and later a historic offer to meet Trump, who quickly accepted.
The New China News Agency reported that Xi, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, said, “China is willing to continue to play a constructive role in the issue of the peninsula and work together with all parties including the DPRK to jointly promote the relaxation of the situation on the peninsula.”
“I think (the meeting) shows some sense of urgency on both sides,” said Go Myung-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “I think Xi Jinping now understands that China was being sidelined in these discussions that were taking place between North Korea, the U.S. and South Korea.”
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The first public indication of Kim’s visit came Monday night, when Japanese media reported on a 21-car train crossing from North Korea at the Chinese border city of Dandong. Other signs of a high-level visit were quickly apparent — train delays in and around Beijing, beefed-up security along a major thoroughfare and the barring of tourists from Tiananmen Square.
By traveling on a train, Kim followed precedents set by his grandfather and father, North Korea’s two previous leaders.
His grandfather Kim Il Sung, who ruled the country from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994, and his father, Kim Jong Il, who ruled from 1994 until his death in 2011, both traveled abroad on heavily armored luxury trains.
Lankov, the professor, said that the three Kims have all proven remarkably adept at getting their way with foreign governments.
“I’ve been studying North Korea for 35 years, and I’ve written books looking at their political and social history over the past 70 years,” he said. “I can assure you North Koreans have so far managed to outsmart everybody. They were remarkably good at playing Russia and China against each other in the 1950s and ’60s. They’ve outsmarted Americans a number of times, and they’ve outsmarted South Koreans too. I don’t know why we shouldn’t expect they won’t outsmart them once again.”
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(Kemeng Fan in the Los Angeles Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.)
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