NORTH KOREA’S reclusive leader Kim Jong-il was in China yesterday looking for financial and moral support from the impoverished country’s most important ally.
Mr Kim’s armoured train – which is reportedly stocked with cases of Bordeaux reds, has lobster tanks and carries two armoured Mercedes-Benz cars – rumbled across the border into China at Dandong yesterday morning.
Mr Kim (68) was later in a motorcade of 50 limousines and other vehicles which drove to the Furama Hotel in Dalian on the eastern Chinese seaboard.
The visit comes as tension mounts between the two Koreas over the sinking of a South Korean warship and the ongoing failure to resume stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations.
Korea-watchers will be looking to see whether Mr Kim, who is said to have suffered a stroke in 2008, is accompanied by his youngest son, Jong-un, who is being groomed for power.
Mr Kim has a lot to do if he wants to rejoin the international community and any such efforts are likely to start in China.
China and North Korea are described as being “as close as lips and teeth”.
China backed North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War and supplies from China are said to be the only thing keeping the North Korean government afloat.
However, Beijing is said to be irritated by a nuclear test last year which led to China supporting international sanctions against the North, a rare occurrence.
Fearful of a flood of refugees from North Korea or of the North unifying with the South and creating a US-backed buffer state on its borders, China has helped North Korea.
The last time Mr Kim visited China, in 2006, he toured some of the country’s booming factories to see how he could implement some of China’s reforms to prop up his country’s failing industrial infrastructure.
China is likely to offer Mr Kim some inducements to get him to rejoin six-nation talks aimed at resolving the nuclear impasse. Washington’s position is that it sees North Korea’s return to the talks as a basic condition for dialogue with Pyongyang.
For its part, North Korea has said it will not return to the talks unless Washington commits to discussing a peace treaty and lifting sanctions. Any sign of the North trying to reach out would be in vain if evidence emerges that it sank the Cheonan warship, which went down on March 26th after an unexplained explosion. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed.
Mr Kim has faced rare public anger at home recently over his government’s botched currency reform aimed at regaining control over the economy late last year. Two senior finance officials were executed in March.