China Confirms Visit by North Korea’s Kim
China invited North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who began his seventh trip there on Friday, to learn more about its economic development, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Sunday. Messrs. Wen and Lee discussed Mr. Kim’s visit during a meeting in Japan ahead of a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Mr. Wen told Mr. Lee that China invited Mr. Kim so that he gets “an opportunity to understand China’s development” and use that knowledge for North Korea’s own development, according to a statement issued by Mr. Lee’s office. Chinese officials offered a similar explanation for trips that Mr. Kim made there in 2001 and 2006.
North Korea initiated some economic reforms in 2002 that some analysts attributed to the 2001 trip, but it later pulled back most of them, including plans to create a joint industrial zone on its border with China. No major changes happened after the 2006 trip, though Mr. Kim ventured all the way to Shenzhen, the booming factory city that borders Hong Kong in China’s southeast. Mr. Kim, the 70-year-old dictator who has led North Korea since 1994, is reportedly afraid of flying and entered China’s Jilin province by train on Friday. On Sunday, his train went from Jilin’s provincial capital of Changchung to Yangzhou, a city near Shanghai.
Though Mr. Kim rarely travels, the current trip is his third to China in the past year, a period in which Mr. Kim has accelerated efforts to prepare a succession plan for his third son, Kim Jong Eun, to take power upon his death. For months, South Korean media speculated that the younger Mr. Kim, who was publicly revealed to the North Korean public for the first time in September, would soon travel to China himself. Much of the day Friday, South Korean media reported that it was Kim Jong Eun aboard the armored train that entered China earlier in the day. South Korean government officials late Friday said they received information that it was Kim Jong Il making the trip, instead.