NORTH KOREA'S young leader wants a state visit to China in the latest
move in his push to lift the isolated state out of decades of poverty, but
risks further fraying ties with his only powerful ally by sticking to the
threat of a new nuclear test.
It is not clear whether China
will be prepared to host him, as requested, in September when Beijing will be
preoccupied with its own leadership change. The leadership may also have its
doubts about the unproven Kim Jong-un, who after only four months in office,
defied his giant neighbour by conducting a long-range rocket test.
A source with ties to both
Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters yesterday that Kim's uncle, Jang Song-thaek,
effectively the second most powerful figure in Pyongyang, had asked for the
visit when he met Chinese leaders on a visit to Beijing last week.
"It will be a state visit.
This was one of the most important missions of Jang Song-thaek's visit,"
the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
China's foreign ministry declined
to comment on the proposed visit, which would be Kim's first trip abroad since
he took office and became the third of his line to rule North Korea.
Kim, in his late 20s, appears to
be trying hard to soften the dour image of his dictator father whom he
succeeded in December.
He has appeared waving and
smiling at public events, even attending a pop concert that included Disney
characters, and at times - just as unusually for a North Korean leader -
accompanied by his wife.
But for most of North Korea's 22
million people, who are among the Asia's poorest, little has changed.
Some analysts see Jang as the
driving force behind the North's promise of economic reform. Kim's uncle made
his trip to China to press its leaders to provide greater backing for an
economy brought to its knees by decades of mismanagement and international
sanctions over missile and nuclear tests.
Beijing may be loath to host Kim
in September at a time when China is preparing its own leadership change and
because of the April rocket test, analysts said.
"North Korea has been nice
to China only in the past one and half months," said Shi Yinhong, a
professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
"Heaven knows whether North
Korea will change again in a few months."
The proposed visit also comes
when there are doubts over how willing Chinese companies are to put money in
their neighbour, with its complex and contradictory investment laws.
One Chinese mining company this
month took the rare step of turning to the Internet to air grievances over what
it saw as the North's unfair business practices.
Observers said new special
enterprise zones in North Korea, aimed at building up business with China, have
met with little or limited success. United Nations estimates show that a third
of North Korea's population is malnourished.
Reuters
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