A train carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un went into China early Tuesday, South Koreas Yonhap News Agency reported and referred to the Nordic region’s state radio service.
It is a rare trip outside North Korea for Kim, which is one of the 26 head of state planned, participates in a military parade in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.
If it continues as planned, the diplomatic foray first marks that Kim, Russia’s Vladmir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping will appear at the same event.
On Monday, XI and Putin swung to the west under a collection of Eurasian leaders in Tianjin, just south of Beijing.
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) proclaims itself as a non-Western cooperation between 10 countries in the region and seeks to be an alternative to traditional alliances.
KIM’s upcoming presence “formalizes China-Russia-North Korea Trilateral (Relationship) to the Public”, Soo Kim, a geopolitical risk consultant and former CIA analyst, told AFP.
Kim enjoyed a brief effort of high-profile international diplomacy from around 2018, when US President Donald Trump was met and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in several times.
But he retired from the global scene after the collapse of a Summit with Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019.
Kim stayed in North Korea throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but met Putin in Russia’s Far East in 2023.
