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Senior Chinese Leader Leads Delegation to North Korea
The leader of China’s legislature — the country’s second-ranking official — led a high-ranking delegation to North Korea today as efforts intensified to jumpstart talks on the Korean nuclear crisis (see GSN, Oct. 28). Wu Bangguo’s delegation includes senior diplomats, politicians and military leaders. “The two sides are expected to have a friendly and in-depth exchange of views on regional and international affairs and other issues of common interest,” according to the official Chinese Xinhua News Agency (Ted Anthony, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 29). The second highest North Korean official, Kim Young Nam, met the Chinese delegation at the Pyongyang airport. It is not clear if the traveling party would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. “The new Chinese leaders need to get to know Kim Jong Il,” said Yu Bin, an expert on China’s Korea policy at Wittenberg University in Ohio. “This is a very important meeting,” Yu added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 29). “This visit by the Chinese delegation will mark a new chapter in North Korea-China friendship,” according to a commentary in North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper. “The traditional North Korea-China friendship is an unfailing friendship forged by the leaders of the two countries,” the commentary said (CNN.com, Oct. 29). South Korea, meanwhile, believes that progress could be made on future nuclear talks. “We can cautiously say that we are at the stage of finding a clue (to ending the crisis),” said Ra Jong-yil, the country’s national security adviser (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News). Meanwhile, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service has announced that South Korea and the United States have set up about 40 monitoring stations to detect a North Korean nuclear test. The stations would be able to differentiate between earthquakes and tremors created by a nuclear test, Bloomberg reported (Bloomberg.com, Oct. 29).
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