Chinese leader Xi Jinping will travel to Pyongyang for a two-day state visit set for Monday 8 June and Tuesday, 9 June, both countries announced Friday, in what will be his first visit in nearly seven years.<\/p>\n
The trip comes just weeks after Xi separately hosted US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing.<\/p>\n
The trip’s announcement also comes a day after North Korea unveiled a new facility to produce the ingredients for nuclear bombs, a move experts say suggests North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is eager to cement his country\u2019s status as a nuclear weapons state ahead of Xi\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
During a visit to the plant, Kim announced plans to bolster the country\u2019s nuclear forces \u201cat an exponential rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
According to South Korea\u2019s military, the new nuclear facility is a uranium enrichment plant.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Kim has placed a priority on developing relations with Russia by sending troops and conventional weapons to support its war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
But the North Korean leader has also recently been cozying up to China, the North\u2019s biggest trade partner and aid provider.<\/p>\n
Xi and Kim last met in Beijing in September and pledged mutual support and enhanced cooperation.<\/p>\n
Kim was in the Chinese capital to attend a Chinese military parade alongside other foreign leaders, including Putin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese leader Xi Jinping will travel to Pyongyang for a two-day state visit set for Monday 8 June…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26642,141,34,177,25047,25379,2642,129,25561,1797,1334],"class_list":["post-44718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pyongyang","tag-chinese-leader","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-leader","tag-nuclear-bombs","tag-nuclear-facility","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-pyongyang","tag-state-visit","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}