Kim Jong-un set to meet Russian president Putin for the first time
● Kremlin refuses to name the place or date over security concerns
Preparations are under way for a summit between the leader of North Korea and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, Russian officials have revealed.
The Kremlin confirmed earlier this month that Kim Jongun would meet with Mr Putin before the end of the month, but has not named the place or date, citing security concerns.
Russian media have now widely reported the leaders will meet in the port city of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.
That city has been seeing a number of unusually strict security measures.
Maritime authorities said the waters around Russky Island, off the southern tip of Vladivostok, will be closed for all maritime traffic between this morning and Friday morning. The island is home to a university with a conference hall and is seen as a likely summit venue.
Separately, local media reported that some platforms at Vladivostok’s main train station will be closed for several days. Buses will be rerouted from the train station today.
The news website Vl.ru reported that municipal authorities undertook road works to make the entry way in and out of the train station less steep, presumably to allow Mr Kim’s motorcade to drive straight out from the platform.
Mr Kim, like his father, avoids air travel. He is likely to travel by train to Vladivostok – about 419 miles south of Pyongyang.
Earlier yesterday, North Korea confirmed the meeting in a terse, two-sentence statement. North Korea has so far not received what it wants most from the recent flurry of high-level summitry between Mr Kim and various world leaders – namely, relief from
crushing international sanctions. There are fears that a recent North Korean weapon test and a series of jibes at Washington over deadlocked nuclear negotiations mean that Pyongyang may again return to the nuclear and long-range missile tests that had many fearing war in 2017.
Mr Kim had two summits with US president Donald Trump, but the latest in Vietnam in February collapsed because North Korea wanted more sanctions relief than Washington was willing to give for the amount of nuclear disarmament offered by
Pyongyang. It is not clear how, or even if, Mr Putin will push the stalled nuclear talks along. The visit may have more to do with each nation’s economic interests.
Russia would like to gain broader access to North Korea’s mineral resources, including rare metals.
Pyongyang covets Russia’s electricity supplies and wants to attract Russian investment to modernise its dilapidated industrial plants, railways and other infrastructure.
North Korea announced last week that it had tested what it called a new type of “tactical guided weapon”. While unlikely to be a prohibited test of a medium or long-range ballistic missile that could scuttle the negotiations, the announcement signalled the North’s growing disappointment with the diplomatic breakdown.
Mr Kim has two urgent concerns as he heads to the summit. More than 10,000 North Korean labourers still employed in Russia, many working in the logging industry in the Russian Far East, are being kicked out by the end of this year as a 2017 UN sanctions resolution takes effect.
The labourers, who previously numbered as many as 50,000, have provided a revenue stream estimated by US officials in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr Kim is also looking at the possibility of a food shortage this summer. Russia has shown a willingness to provide humanitarian aid. The nation last month announced it had shipped more than 2,000 tonnes of wheat to the North Korean port of Chongjin.