Kim Jong Un Pays Surprise Visit to Communist China, Reviving Talk of a Possible Summit With Trump

A surprise visit to Communist China on Saturday by North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, is prompting renewed speculation about the possibility of a meeting this year between Mr. Kim and President Trump.Any such meeting, which would be the first since the three meetings between Messrs. Trump and Kim during the American president’s first term, would likely come on the sidelines of an international summit scheduled for November 14-15 at the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where China’s leader, Xi Jinping, could participate.While South Korean intelligence has rated the prospects of a Trump-Kim meeting this year at just 50 percent, Mr. Kim’s highly publicized walk across a newly inaugurated Yalu River bridge is also seen as a sign of Pyongyang’s strengthening ties with China after several years in which it has been drifting closer to Russia.Mr. Kim’s previously unannounced one-day visit began with his arrival by road across the 2-mile-long border bridge, which was completed in 2014 but opened to traffic only this month as a result of North Korea’s strict pandemic lockdown, infrastructure problems, and China’s support for 2017 UN sanctions aimed at Pyongyang’s nuclear program.On the Chinese side, he was greeted by Beijing’s top political adviser, Wang Huning, who called for expanded personnel exchanges, economic cooperation and strategic coordination, according to China’s Xinhua news agency. Ties between the countries have been strained in recent years by Chinese concerns over Pyongyang’s nuclear program and a crackdown on Korean guest workers in China.A South Korean lawmaker, Youn Kun-young, was quoted by Agence France-Presse saying Mr. Kim was “understood” to have also met the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, though that was not confirmed by Xinhua. Mr Youn told the French news agency the brief visit could send a “positive signal” about a possible U.S.-North Korea summit.A former president of the South’s University of North Korean Studies, Yang Moo-jin, told AFP that Kim may have sought to “press China to move more quickly” on commitments made during a visit to North Korea by Mr. Xi earlier this year. “He may also have sought Beijing’s active support and cooperation ahead of a possible summit with Trump in Shenzhen,” Mr. Yang said.South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers last month that it saw a 50-percent chance that the American and North Korean leaders would meet at Shenzhen during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit, which is scheduled to begin on November 17.Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in another meeting with Mr. Kim but so far has received no public encouragement from Pyongyang. He seemed to downplay the prospects when speaking to reporters on October 19, saying, “I get along with him very well, and I’m not sure that anybody’s asking for a meeting.”A senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ankit Panda, told Reuters he sees less than a 10 percent chance of a Trump-Xi meeting during APEC or a subsequent summit in the Philippines.“If Trump wants a meeting with Kim, I think the North Koreans are looking for a costly public signal,” Mr. Panda said. He noted that Mr. Trump’s abrupt decision to scale back an annual military exercise with South Korea in August may have been intended as such a signal but did not appear to have been sufficient.The U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Michelle Steel, was quoted as saying during an American Chamber of Commerce event Thursday at Seoul that if a Trump-Kim summit does come together, it will likely come with little advance warning. “If it happens, then it’s going to happen the next day or within a couple of days’ notice,” she said.Regardless of his summit plans, Mr. Kim stands to enjoy substantial economic benefits from the opening of the new bridge, which is expected to facilitate the movement of heavy equipment, raw materials, and energy products into North Korea from China. The crossing is designed to accommodate container shipments and heavy cargo trucks, easing long-standing bottlenecks.“Kim has given his imprimatur to bilateral trade by crossing the New Yalu River Bridge to enter China,” a Korea specialist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Christopher Green, told CNN.Beijing is understood to have watched uneasily from the sidelines as Mr. Kim moved closer to Russia in recent years, including by sending troops and weapons to support Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Xi sought to draw North Korea back into its orbit during a visit to Pyongyang in June, when he offered to expand bilateral cooperation in trade, agriculture, construction and technology.

Kim Jong Un Pays Surprise Visit to Communist China, Reviving Talk of a Possible Summit With Trump

Kim Jong Un Pays Surprise Visit to Communist China, Reviving Talk of a Possible Summit With Trump

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