High-ranking delegations from China and Russia will arrive in North Korea this week, the first visits of this level since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the regime of Kim Jong Un has become even more isolated from the world. The official occasion for visits is the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.
Hu Zhaoming, spokesman for the International Communications Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, said in a statement China, a Chinese delegation headed by Li Hongzhong, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, will travel to Pyongyang this week. He is due to attend the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, and his visit is at the invitation of North Korea, it added.
The participation of the Russian side in the North Korean celebrations of the July 27, 1953 event was confirmed by the Ministry of Defense Russia. The delegation will be led by the Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu. The visit is intended to help strengthen military ties between Russia and North Korea and will be an important step in developing cooperation between the two countries.
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Russian and Chinese delegations in North Korea
CNN notes that the visit of the two delegations is a rare display of North Korea’s diplomatic activity. At the beginning of the pandemic coronavirus already cut off from the rest of the world, the country has further deepened into isolation, closing borders even to diplomats. “Now, his closest allies will visit him at a historic moment,” the station points out.
CNN reminds that China and Russia have been one of Pyongyang’s very few allies for many years. During the Korean War, China sent a quarter of a million troops to support the North Koreans, and in the following decades, the Kim family regime received important support from Beijing. In turn, Moscow and North Korea have been connected for decades by, among others, hostility towards the West. When because of war in Ukraine Russia has been isolated in the international arena, relations between the two countries have remained warm, adds Politico.
The visit will take place simultaneously in an atmosphere of heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula, reminds CNN. Kim Jong Un’s regime in recent days continues firing ballistic missiles and scares that Washington, Seoul ‘crossed a red line’when a US nuclear-capable submarine came to visit a port in South Korea.
CNN, tvn24.pl, PAP, Politico
Main photo source: KCNA/UPI Photo via Newscom