Hong Kong – North Korean leader Kim Jong a rare international visit next week to attend a military parade in the Chinese capital, Chinese state media reported Thursday.
The parade in Beijing on September 3 is detained to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
According to Xinhua, the China state news agency, the heads of state and the government of 26 countries will be in the parade, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. The leaders of the United States and their allies are not among those who are expected to attend, partly for protest for the continuous Putin war against Ukraine.
Other Xinhua leaders said they were attending Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Indonesian President Pabowo Subianto, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and General Mayor Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military government in Myanmar.
Kim rarely leaves North Korea, which has been isolated by international sanctions on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
It was not clear immediately when it would go to China or how long it would be there. Kim has not visited China, the neighbor of North Korea and the largest commercial partner, since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ties of China-North Korea have been tensioned in recent years by the growing association of North Korea with Russia, where North Korea has sent artillery and troops to support Moscow in their war against Ukraine. Experts say that in return Russia can be providing advanced military technology that North Korea could use for its weapons programs.
Kim’s last trip abroad was in September 2023, when he and Putin met in a space port in the Far East of Russia. Putin also made a trip to Pyongyang, where he and Kim signed a mutual defense pact in June 2024.
President Donald Trump, who had three meetings in person with Kim during his first mandate, has repeatedly expressed interest in reliving denuclearization conversations that were broken in 2019, even during a White House summit on Monday with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
North Korea has dismissed the idea, saying that Trump must accept it as a nuclear state.
