Speculation on N Korean leader’s visit to China rife as train departs
MYSTERY TRIP: If confirmed, it would mark Kim’s first trip abroad since coming to power
BEIJING: Speculation that Kim Jongun visited Beijing on his first-ever foreign trip as North Korea’s leader was rife on Tuesday after Japanese media reported the arrival and departure of a special train met by an honour guard.
Heightened security at possible venues for a high-level meeting, motorcades driven under police escort, and a non-denial from Chinese authorities also fuelled the belief that Kim had come to pay his respects to President Xi Jinping.
If confirmed, it would mark Kim’s first trip abroad since coming to power in 2011 and signal an intriguing twist in a rapid diplomatic thaw that has opened the door to separate summits between Kim and the presidents of South Korea and the United States.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported the train’s departure from a Beijing station but said it was not clear if Kim was aboard, a day after its arrival sparked rampant speculation about the mystery passenger’s identity.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying sidestepped a request to confirm if Kim or another high-level North Korean official was visiting, saying she was “not aware” of the situation.
“If we have information, we will publish it,” Hua said, while adding that China was willing to work with North Korea to “continue to play a positive and constructive role in order to realise the denuclearisation of the peninsula”.
Some analysts had suggested China — the North’s only major ally — had been sidelined by Pyongyang’s approaches to Seoul and Washington, but a visit by Kim would put Beijing firmly back at the centre of the diplomatic scrum.
Bill Bishop, publisher of the Sinocism China Newsletter, said Xi likely wanted to meet Kim before a possible summit with US President Donald Trump in May.
At the Diaoyutai guest house, where Kim’s late father Kim Jong-il stayed during his visits to Beijing, there was an unusually heavy police presence with officers stationed every 50-100 metres in front of the imposing compound.
An AFP photographer saw a motorcade of limousines leave the guest house under a police escort on Tuesday morning.
There was also heightened security at two possible venues for a highlevel meeting — the Great Hall of the People and Zhongnanhai, the central leadership compound next to Beijing’s Forbidden City.
South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper Choson Ilbo cited a senior Seoul intelligence official as saying that Kim had been the visitor. Other media speculated it might have been Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong or the country’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yongnam.