North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has arrived in Beijing, after crossing the border by train into China earlier in the day, before his planned attendance at a military parade marking Japan’s surrender in World War II, state media have reported.
Kim is among 26 world leaders scheduled to attend Wednesday’s parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The event in Beijing is set to be the first time that Kim, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin have gathered at the same venue.
Kim’s train crossed the North Korea-China border in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the state-controlled Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported.
“Key senior officials from the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are accompanying Comrade Kim Jong Un on his visit to the People’s Republic of China,” the daily reported, using North Korea’s official name.
Kim’s visit to China comes on the heels of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, where Xi and Putin hit out at Western dominance of the international order.
“This is Kim Jong Un’s first time participating in an event with multiple world leaders and presents an important diplomatic opportunity,” Jenny Town, the director of the Washington, DC-based research programme 38 North, told Al Jazeera.
“Not only does it reinforce Kim’s elevated standing in an evolving world order, it also situates North Korea firmly within a shared security narrative aligned with China and Russia against the West.”
One of the world’s most isolated states, North Korea has long relied on China and Russia for economic and diplomatic support.
Kim, who rarely travels abroad, has met Xi five times since coming to power in 2011, most recently in 2019, when the North Korean leader attended an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of China-North Korea relations.
Kim has met Putin three times, most recently in June 2024, when the two leaders signed a mutual defence treaty in Pyongyang.
Pyongyang’s push to help Moscow in Ukraine war
Pyongyang has grown especially close to Moscow in recent years, sending thousands of troops to support Putin’s war in Ukraine.
About 2,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to help Russia fight Ukraine are estimated to have been killed, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said on Tuesday, according to lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun.
“[In April] the number of war dead was at least 600. But based on updated assessments, it now estimates the figure at around 2,000,” Lee said after a briefing from NIS.
South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have said North Korea sent more than 10,000 soldiers to Russia in 2024, primarily to the Kursk region, which Ukraine had invaded and established a strong military presence in, along with its artillery, missiles, and long-range rocket systems.
Lee said NIS believed that Pyongyang planned to deploy another 6,000 soldiers and engineers to Russia and that 1,000 had already reached there.
North Korea only confirmed it had deployed troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine in April and admitted that its soldiers had been killed in combat.
Last week, Kim met the families of the soldiers killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine, offering condolences for their “unbearable pain” and promising the bereaved “a beautiful life”, state media reported.
The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on Saturday that Kim hosted the families of slain soldiers, and expressed “grief at having failed to save the precious lives” of those who sacrificed themselves to defend the country’s honour.
The North Korean leader said his “heart breaks and aches” for the children who lost fathers.
“I, our state and our army will take full responsibility for them and train them admirably as staunch and courageous fighters like their fathers,” he added.
