According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has arrived in Beijing for an official visit. The Age reports:
“We have confirmed the arrival of a special train at (the Chinese border city) Dandong, and we believe it is highly likely that Chairman Kim is on board,” a South Korean government official told Yonhap.
Yonhap had issued a similar report several weeks ago about a likely visit but had to revise its story after officials at the border said the train thought to have been carrying Mr Kim was an ordinary cargo train without passengers.
The visit would be Mr Kim’s first trip abroad since his recovery from a suspected stroke in 2008.
It comes as tensions are rising on the peninsula, with the South suspecting the North of attacking one of its navy vessels in late March near a disputed sea border, killing 46 of its sailors in what could be one of the deadliest strikes since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Analysts said Mr Kim may be heading to China seeking financial aid to prop up his state’s staggering economy in return for a return to international nuclear disarmament-for-aid talks hosted by Beijing that Pyongyang has boycotted for over a year.
Earlier, Yonhap report that Kim may be arriving in China this week. From AFP:
He “has not crossed into China yet, but it appears highly likely that his Chinese trip would come either today or tomorrow as a considerable level of preparations have been done,” the source told Yonhap.
The news agency gave no further details.
Officials at the National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s main spy agency, were not immediately available for comment.
Kim’s trip to China had been widely forecast by South Korean and Japanese media to be around late April, but it did not go ahead as predicted.
Seoul’s YTN television reported Sunday Kim’s trip might have been pushed back due to the heavy outside media exposure and safety concerns.
