Visit to China by N. Korea’s Kim an Opening

In his first trip abroad as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il paid a three-day visit to Beijing this week, securing China’s support ahead of a landmark summit with South Korea, officials here confirmed Thursday.

The two governments kept the visit secret until Thursday evening, by which time Kim had arrived back in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

The visit signals further efforts by North Korea to break out of its diplomatic isolation and create positive momentum ahead of the June 12-14 meeting in Pyongyang between Kim and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

The summit is the first between leaders of the two Koreas, which have maintained an uneasy truce since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“China welcomes and supports a summit meeting between the two sides,” Chinese President Jiang Zemin told the North Korean leader, according to the official New China News Agency. “China supports the two sides in the north and south of the peninsula to independently realize peaceful reunification.”

China and North Korea, allies during the Korean War, have described their relationship as being “as close as lips and teeth.” But in recent years, Chinese officials say their diplomatic influence with Pyongyang has waned, especially after China and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992.

The New China News Agency said Jiang and Kim Jong Il pledged to “make joint efforts to carry on the tradition” of close ties and “reached consensus on major issues of common concern in an intimate and friendly atmosphere.”

“We can say that China still has leverage over North Korea in some sense,” Ok-Nim Chung, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And because China’s interests on the Korean peninsula are almost identical to those of the U.S., China’s role can be very positive in [the] future.”

South Korea also saw the trip as encouraging. “We expect Kim’s visit to China . . . and talks with Chinese leaders to positively contribute to the inter-Korean summit, dialogue and cooperation between both Koreas,” said a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.

During the visit, the seldom-seen Kim surveyed Tiananmen Square from atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace and banqueted with top Chinese officials. State television here showed the 58-year-old North Korean leader smiling in a summer-weight gray Mao suit as he met with Jiang at the Great Hall of the People.

Later, the North Korean leader visited Beijing’s version of Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun. Chinese television showed him at the headquarters of high-tech firm Legend, talking animatedly in front of one of the company’s top-selling personal computers.

South Korea’s ambassador to China, Kwon Byong Hyon, told reporters that Kim was deeply impressed by Beijing’s modernity.

Kim “pointed out that China’s reform and opening have achieved great success, and its international status is on the rise,” according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue.

China said during Kim’s visit that it had donated an unspecified amount of grain and supplies to North Korea. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans--some estimates put the number as high as 3 million--have died of famine as the isolated country’s command economy has stagnated.