A top North Korean envoy delivered a letter from leader Kim Jong Un to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday and told him Pyongyang would take steps to rejoin stalled nuclear disarmament talks, in an apparent victory for Beijing’s efforts to coax its unruly ally into lowering tensions.
North Korean Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae’s three-day visit was seen as a fence-mending mission after Pyongyang angered Beijing with recent snubs and moves to develop its nuclear program. Choe returned to North Korea late Friday.
The official China News Service said Choe delivered the handwritten letter from Kim to Xi at an afternoon meeting at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing. It gave no details about the letter’s contents.
North Korea is willing to work with all sides to “appropriately resolve the relevant questions through the six-party talks and other forms,” Choe was quoted as saying by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. He said Pyongyang was “willing to take active measures in this regard.”
Choe offered no details on how North Korea planned to resume talks. North Korea walked away from the six-party nuclear disarmament talks in 2009 over disagreements on how to verify steps the North was meant to take to end its nuclear programs. Foreign observers often claim that North Korea has a history of raising tensions in an attempt to push its adversaries to negotiations meant to win aid.
Since its third nuclear test, in February, North Korea has repeatedly said that any future diplomatic talks would have to recognize it as a nuclear power. That’s at odds with the basis of the six-party talks and puts Pyongyang at loggerheads with Washington, which says it won’t accept North Korea as an atomic power and demands that talks be based on past commitments by the North to abandon its nuclear programs.
Still, Choe’s remarks seem to indicate an easing of tensions between North Korea and its communist neighbor.
John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who specializes in China and North Korea, said the fact that Kim’s envoy “is being quoted as saying that North Korea is open to China’s suggestions already is a strong signal of kiss and make up.”
“This trip is moving things back to a regular strategic dialogue,” he said.
China has been under intense pressure from Washington to push North Korea into lowering tensions and resuming dialogue.
Xi reaffirmed longstanding ties between the communist neighbors, and urged all sides to “keep cool and exercise restraint.”
The six-party talks, which include the Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia, should aim to end North Korea’s nuclear programs and “maintain lasting peace and stability on the peninsula and in northeast Asia,” Xi was quoted as saying.
The meeting followed an unusual half-year gap in high-level contacts during which Pyongyang angered Beijing by conducting rocket launches, a nuclear test and other saber-rattling — spiking tensions with South Korea and the U.S.
Beijing considered the moves an affront to its interests in regional stability and showed its displeasure by joining with the U.S. to back U.N. sanctions and cut off dealings with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank.
North Korea also frustrated Beijing by refusing to agree to high-level meetings and incensed the Chinese public this month with the detention of a Chinese fishing crew.
“The relationship is rocky, so they will try to mend the relationship,” Cui Yingjiu, a retired professor of Korean at Peking University, said of North Korea. “Second, they also want to improve relations with the U.S. and need China to be their intermediary.”
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