China and North Korea Seek to Mend Ties Tested by Nuclear Ambitions

Some in China say that tensions will remain if North Korea is unwilling to change its nuclear development policy

Ri Su Yong, one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s top lieutenants, is in Beijing this week to meet with Chinese Communist Party officials. Photo: Reuters

Chinese and North Korean party officials are holding their highest-level meetings in nearly a year, seeking to bolster their longtime amity even as the top Pyongyang delegate reaffirmed his country’s commitment to the nuclear program that has been a source of tension between the two socialist allies.

Ri Su Yong, one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s top lieutenants, met Tuesday in Beijing with Song Tao, a top Chinese Communist Party official, at the beginning of a three-day visit, according to a report by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency also carried a brief report on the meeting, during which Mr. Ri briefed the Chinese on his country’s recent ruling party congress, its first in 36 years.

According to the North Korean agency report, Mr. Song sent greetings to the North Korean leader through Mr. Ri, describing the relations between the two countries as “the precious treasure provided and brought into bloom by the leaders of the elder generation of the two parties and two countries.”

The report said that Mr. Ri also told his counterpart that Pyongyang planned “to protect peace and security on the Korean peninsula” by developing the isolated country’s economy and by “the building of nuclear force,” echoing the signature dual-development policy that Mr. Kim has espoused since his elevation to North Korea’s leadership.

Relations between the two countries have been increasingly rocky over the last six months, after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February. Following that, China, increasingly impatient with its ally, joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in a vote to impose tough sanctions.

The U.S. and its allies had been pushing China to tighten pressure on North Korea over its nuclear ambitions.

But other recent events have also revealed fraying ties. In April, 13 North Korean workers at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo arrived in South Korea, in what Seoul called one of the largest known group defections in recent years.

And last December, an all-female North Korean pop group close to Mr. Kim abruptly canceled a concert in Beijing over unspecified “communication issues,” according to Xinhua.

But the two sides appear to be working hard to at least retain basic formalities.

After North Korea’s Workers’ Party Congress in May, for instance, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory note to Pyongyang. Beijing also sent its Olympic basketball team to Pyongyang this past weekend for a friendly basketball game with a North Korean team, which was attended by Mr. Kim.

For its part, North Korea has studiously avoided pinning the blame on Chinese authorities for the disappearance of the restaurant workers, which Pyongyang state media has portrayed as a mass abduction by South Korean intelligence agents.

By dispatching Mr. Song, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, to meet with the North Korean official, Beijing appears to be sending a message that it still considers North Korea a close friend within its traditional circle of ideological allies, says Adam Cathcart, a North Korea expert at the University of Leeds in the U.K.

Unlike China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which handles regular state-to-state affairs, the International Liaison Department manages relations with other socialist allies on a closer, party-to-party basis, he said.

“Party-party relations are starting to get back on track,” Mr. Cathcart said.

Mr. Ri, a longtime senior official who served most recently as North Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was promoted to the Politburo of the central committee of North Korea’s ruling party last month.

“The party-to-party link traditionally is the friendlier one, and particularly in the past few years China’s foreign ministry has played the ‘bad cop’ role toward Kim Jong Un,” says John Delury, an expert on Chinese and Korean issues at Yonsei University in Seoul. “Welcoming this large delegation led by Ri Su Yong shows Beijing’s will to work with, not against, Pyongyang.”

Last October, Beijing sent Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, to stand next to Mr. Kim during a parade to mark a Korean Workers’ Party anniversary. Mr. Song was also present on that trip.

Even so, Mr. Cathcart warned, “I would be careful about labeling the visit a breakthrough. If anything, it is a return to quasi-normal between two neighboring Leninist parties who need to talk.”

Underscoring their unresolved problems, North Korea appeared to signal its commitment to its military strategy by attempting a missile launch on Tuesday, just hours before the meeting in Beijing, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A foreign relations expert with a Chinese government-backed think tank, who spoke on condition of anonymity, took a dour view of Tuesday’s meeting in Beijing, saying that relations can't improve if North Korea is unwilling to change its nuclear development policy.

“In the past, even if it was doing bad things on nuclear development, at least North Korea was talking about denuclearization and still earnestly engaging with six-party talks,” the expert said. “But now it’s not like that -- they’re openly developing nuclear weapons and saying they want to build even more. So naturally, relations are at a low level.”

The trip could raise speculation about whether a possible visit to Beijing could be in the cards for Mr. Kim, who has yet to travel to the Chinese capital since his elevation to the pinnacle of leadership after his father’s death in late 2011.

Hopes were raised when North Korea’s putative No. 2 Choe Ryong Hae met with Mr. Xi in 2013, only to apparently fall out of Mr. Kim’s good graces.