Kim pays a second surprise visit to China, raising diplomatic drama
DALIAN, CHINA — The leaders of China and North Korea met for the second time in two months Tuesday, staying overnight in this Chinese port city as China worked to regain control in the fast-moving diplomacy over the North’s nuclear program.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un flew to Dalian on Monday, where he held long rounds of discussions with Chinese officials, attended a formal banquet and took a stroll on a beachfront sidewalk with China’s president, Xi Jinping. The pageantry was shown at length on China’s state-run evening television news, with the two men looking like friends, if rather stiff ones.
The Chinese leader ap- peared intent on showing that the frayed relationship with North Korea was now repaired and that China was as important to resolving the problems of North Korea’s nuclear weapons as the United States.
President Donald Trump has said he will meet with Kim in the coming weeks and tweeted hours after the meeting in Dalian that he expected to talk shortly on the phone with Xi about North Korea, as well as trade.
A Chinese statement, which was issued on behalf of both leaders after Kim left, showed the differences between the Trump administration on the one hand, and China and North Korea on the other, over the question of how to rid the North of its nuclear weapons.
It envisioned a far more drawnout process for the denuclearization of North Korea than the demands of the Trump administration, which has talked about dismantling the North’s arsenal in six months to a year.
Kim wanted “phased and synchronous measures in a responsible manner” and hoped to “eventually achieve denuclearization and lasting peace on the peninsula,” the Chinese statement said.
North Korea’s bare-bones economy — which has been long kept afloat by China, but is now being pummeled by United Nations sanctions — featured in the Dalian talks, the statement said. Kim told the Chinese that he wanted to develop his economy, a move that China said it supported.
Chinese officials will be heading to Tokyo for meetings Wednesday with South Korean and Japanese counterparts as part of the recent burst of diplomacy over North Korea.