North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il will visit Russia this month, the North announced on Thursday in a sign of the communist state making a new push to end its isolation.
Diplomats said Kim was expected to meet Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the eastern city of Vladivostok but the official announcement by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said only
that the supreme leader would visit Russia’s Far East ”in late August”.
With signs of major changes being made to the paralysed North Korean economy, Kim will take his rare new plunge into international diplomacy as the North engages in a series of contacts with neighbours and rivals.
Three days of high level talks in South Korea have just ended with an accord to rejuvenate reconciliation projects. The North is also to hold Red Cross and official government talks with Japan
over the next 10 days.
The United States is considering whether to send an envoy to Pyongyang.
Kim Jong-Il, who reportedly fears flying, staged an epic 24-day train trip to Moscow and back to Pyongyang last summer.
Russian media have said Kim and Putin will hold a summit in Vladivostok around August 20 and messages exchanged by the two leaders reinforced predictions of a summit.
”I am confident that your forthcoming visit to Russia will contribute to consolidating the Russia-DPRK (North Korea) friendly relations and consolidating peace and security in Asia,” Putin said in his message according to KCNA.
The North Korean leader said ”relations are now steadily developing on good terms in the spirit of our meeting in Moscow last year and the joint declaration and in keeping with the aspiration and desire of the two peoples,” KCNA added.
He said ties between the two former communist allies which ”have entered a new phase will expand and develop in various fields.”
Relations between Russia and North Korea faltered after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
But the former allies have signed a series of new accords to put ties back on track at Putin’s initiative aimed at expanding Moscow’s influence in Asia.
The messages were exchanged to mark Thursday’s 57th anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule by Russian and US-led forces.
The announcement came amid signs that the Stalinist North is embarking on economic reforms after a decade of collapse brought on by the fall of the Soviet communist bloc and a series of natural disasters.
Hundreds of thousands of people are said to have died from starvation and related illness over the past eight years while foreign officials said most of the country’s industry has come to a standstill.
The authorities have massively devalued the official value of the won currency while increasing wages and prices. But diplomats say the exact aim of the reforms is unsure.
Parallel to the reforms, while maintaining a strong rhetoric, North Korea has also indicated that it wants better relations with the rival South.
It returned to talks this week with South Korea and agreed to hold more reunions of families kept apart since the 1950-53 Korean War and to economic cooperation talks. But the Koreas could not agree talks on easing military tensions.
This weekend Japanese and North Korean Red Cross officials will hold humanitarian talks in Pyongyang ahead of official government level talks on establishing diplomatic relations on August 25 and
26.
The United States welcomed the inter-Korean talks this week but said it would await the result of the Pyongyang-Tokyo negotiations before deciding whether to send an envoy to the North.
Recognition by the United States, which fought with the South in the Korean War, is the prize most sought by Kim Jong-Il, according to diplomats and analysts. – Sapa-AFP