North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was reportedly heading home on Wednesday on a special train, ending a secretive week-long visit to China that apparently focused on nuclear weapons and economic reforms.
Japanese and South Korean press reports said the famously reclusive Kim, who is afraid of flying, had left Beijing on Tuesday night and crossed the border back into North Korea on Wednesday morning.
A rail official in China’s northeastern border city of Dandong said a train was due to pass into North Korea on Wednesday.
”There is no regular train scheduled for today… but I know there is a special train today,” the official said, although she insisted she did not know who it was for.
The apparent confirmation of Kim’s departure looked set to draw the curtains on a cat-and-mouse game in which the Chinese government refused to acknowledge Kim’s presence, and did their best to ensure his visit remained secret.
”Actually you want me to confirm Kim’s visit but I cannot do that because I’m not authorised to provide any information on this question,” foreign ministry spokesperson Kong Quan told reporters at a regular briefing on Tuesday.
Before this trip, Kim is known to have visited China three times since 2000, most recently in April 2004, and each time the government only acknowledged Kim’s presence after he left the country.
However, widespread foreign media reports, including grainy television footage of the famously bouffant-coiffured Kim, placed him in Shanghai, the southern economic showcase province of Guangdong and finally Beijing.
Kim most likely met Chinese President Hu Jintao during the trip, with various reports saying their encounter occurred in Beijing or in Guangdong.
Whatever the location, analysts said North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and the six-party talks aimed at enticing Pyongyang to disarm would have been high on their agenda.
”China is arguing to North Korea that if they can solve the nuclear problem first, then a lot of things will flow from that,” said Brian Bridges, an expert on North Korea at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
”That denuclearisation leads to recognition and other economic benefits.”
Stephen Noerper, a Northeast Asia expert from the University of New York, said Kim was also likely making a statement that he had a friend in China, one of North Korea’s few international allies.
This was especially important for North Korea as it struggled against the United States in the six-party talks, which also include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
”During a period of very difficult negotiations with the United States, it shows that there are those who are willing to talk and engage,” Noerper said.
While China would have wanted to emphasise the importance of the six-party forum, Bridges said Kim would have been most interested in what further economic benefits, ideas and deals he could extract from China.
”For Kim, he wants to reconfirm the continuation of food and energy aid and another major objective is to seek out Chinese investment to North Korea.”
This would explain Kim’s visit to Guangdong, where China’s 20 years of robust economic growth started, Bridges said.
In Guangdong, Kim reportedly stayed in a five-star accommodation in the provincial capital of Guangzhou, while also visiting Shenzhen and Zhuhai, two bustling cities that border Hong Kong and Macau. – Sapa-AFP