South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on May 21 that Chinese President Xi Jinping may travel to Pyongyang as early as next week, according to a senior government official in Seoul. An advance team from China’s Central Security Bureau and protocol officers from the CCP Central Committee have already traveled to the North Korean capital. South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong Young said a Kim Jong Un-Donald Trump summit will be discussed if Xi visits Pyongyang. Trump met Kim three times during his first presidential term.
A Trump-North Korea Summit? What We Know
A 21 May Reuters news report says that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping may visit the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as early as next week, according to a senior government official in Seoul. Initial reporting of the planned visit came from the ROK (South Korea) Yonhap news agency, which filed its story late in the day on Wednesday.
The ROK Foreign Ministry made no immediate comment on the report. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of the DPRK’s only close trading partners and political allies. In the past, the isolationist and authoritarian state was heavily dependent on Beijing for economic aid.
More recently, conditions for the DPRK economy have improved primarily due to massive payments and resources from Russia in the past three years. In exchange for shipping millions of rounds of ammunition, ballistic missiles, and Korean People’s Army (KPA) special forces troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, Pyongyang has been paid billions of dollars in foreign currency, oil, and food by Moscow.
Separately, an ROK government source told the news agency that an advance team of PRC security personnel from the Central Security Bureau and protocol officers from the CCP Central Committee and the PRC Foreign Ministry had already traveled to Pyongyang in preparation for Xi’s summit with the nation’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.
The same sources stated that the CCP leader would be visiting the DPRK by late May or early June.
The Objective of the Xi’s Visit to the DPRK
The PRC and DPRK have had only intermittent and irregular interactions in recent years, partially due to the draconian restrictions on the part of Pyongyang during the pandemic. So, part of Xi’s mission will be to rebuild ties between the two states and re-establish regular exchanges and communications.
This overall goal is what could be called an “umbrella” of sorts – pulling together a disparate set of activities into a coordinated plan for comprehensive cooperation between these two neighboring states.
But the number-one priority, according to 21 May reports from the Yonhap news agency in Seoul, is that Xi will discuss organizing a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump.
The ROK Unification Minister, Chung Dong Young, raised this possibility on Thursday, saying that a summit between Pyongyang and Washington could be one of the main agenda items if Xi visits the DPRK.
Should Xi journey to Pyongyang, a Kim-Trump summit “will surely be discussed,” Chung told reporters outside the government complex in Seoul. He did admit, however, that Xi’s meeting with Kim in the DPRK capital has yet to be confirmed by Beijing.
“Gigantic tectonic plates are in motion,” he said, referring to a series of recent summits and other interactions among the United States, China, and Russia. “Now is the time for us to deeply contemplate strategic options for stability, peace, and mutual prosperity amidst these tectonic changes in the geopolitical landscape of Northeast Asia surrounding the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
The Great Mediator
The DPRK leader Kim had visited Beijing in September of last year and stood alongside Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The occasion was a major military parade held to commemorate 80 years since Japan’s surrender in 1945, which officially ended WWII.
Trump met Kim three times during his first presidential term as part of an effort to negotiate a dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Despite three summits and a good deal of building up expectations before each of them, little progress was made in either scaling back that program or altering the hostile relations between the US and the DPRK.
The US president has said he would be open to meeting the DPRK leader again and that he had a good relationship with him.
Xi is making it increasingly clear that he wants to serve as an intermediary, using his connections and relationships to bring the American and North Korean leaders together. The founder of the PRC, Mao Zedong, went down in history as “the Great Helmsman,” recalled a retired intelligence officer from a NATO nation who still closely follows developments in the PRC.
“Xi, it seems, is trying to become ‘the Great Mediator’ and is trying to use anything he can to ingratiate himself with Trump, with Putin, or with Kim – or any combination thereof – to secure some quid pro quo for himself,” he said. “If I were the Taiwanese, I would be more nervous than usual about now because they are certainly going to be part of any discussions that are either taking place in or organized by Beijing.”
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About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, with a specialization in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
