BLOOD BROTHERS
China’s President Xi greeted by Kim Jong-un with banner celebrating ‘unity formed by blood’ for historic summit in North Korea
KIM Jong-un greeted Xi Jinping with a banner celebrating ‘unity formed by blood’ as the Chinese President arrived for a historic summit in North Korea.
Xi became the first Chinese leader to visit the isolated country for 14 years as he arrived with a delegation of key aides to spend two days in talks with Kim Jong-Un.
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The visit will be largely symbolic, but the leaders are expected to discuss economic and trade issues as well as stalled talks over North Korea’s nuclear programme.
The two have met on four previous occasions – all in the last 15 months – but always in China.
Ahead of the occasion, North Korean capital Pyongyang was decorated with Chinese and North Korean flags, balloon displays, and banners reading “Long Live with Unbreakable Friendship and Unity Formed by Blood”.
China is by far North Korea’s most important political and economic partner, and the Kim regime is believed to have been seeking a visit from Xi for some time.
On Wednesday, Xi wrote an opinion piece for North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper saying that he hopes the visit will "engrave a new chapter of the traditional friendship” between the two countries.
The two are old allies, but relations have been strained recently, with Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions said to be viewed critically in Beijing.
The trip comes a week before the next G20 summit in Japan, where Xi is scheduled to meet President Trump.
That meeting will be the first between Xi and Trump since February talks between the US and North Korea ended without an agreement on North Korea’s denuclearisation.
Analysts say Mr Xi will likely ask Kim if there is anything he can do to move talks forward at the meeting next week, the BBC reported.
Kim is also likely to seek assistance from China in alleviating a drought and food shortages that have hit North Korea in recent months.
Earlier this year, the country’s ambassador to the UN issued a rare appeal for food assistance.
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He blamed the shortages on extreme heat last summer and severe flooding as well as the international sanctions to have been imposed on the country in response to its nuclear testing.
North Korea has historically had problems feeding its population, most notably during a famine in the mid-1990s that it thought to have killed up to 3.5 million people.
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