Kim returns to North Korea after China trip

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il returned home Friday after a week-long trip to China apparently aimed at securing aid for his country's faltering economy, Yonhap news agency reported.

Kim's special armoured train crossed the border to the city of Sinuiju at around 6:30 am (2230 GMT Thursday), the South Korean news agency said, after a 6,000-kilometre (3,720 mile) journey.

Kim, making his third trip in just over a year to the North's key ally and economic prop, visited northeast and east China as well as Beijing, where he met President Hu Jintao and other top officials.

China has pressed the North to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and to ease tensions with South Korea. It also wants its ally to undertake a Chinese-style opening-up of the state-directed economy.

But it was unclear what Kim's trip achieved on either issue, with official media in Pyongyang and Beijing putting a different gloss on Kim's talks with Hu on Wednesday.

China's Xinhua news agency said Kim called for a quick resumption of the long-stalled nuclear disarmament talks, and expressed hope for better ties with South Korea.

But the North's official KCNA news agency said only that the two leaders agreed that denuclearisation "on the whole Korean peninsula" was in the region's interests.

It should be achieved through dialogue including the resumption of six-party talks "and the elimination of obstructive elements", the agency added without specifying the elements.

The North has repeatedly expressed conditional willingness to return to the talks it quit two years ago, but icy relations with the South are complicating the issue.

The South says the North sank one of its warships in March 2010 with the loss of 46 lives. Pyongyang denied the charge but went on last November to shell a border island, killing four people.

Seoul says its neighbour should take responsibility for both incidents before relations can improve.

Yonhap said two planned groundbreaking ceremonies to mark China's additional investment in North Korea were abruptly cancelled.

It said one was related to a joint project to turn Hwanggumpyong, an island in the Yalu River near Sinuiju, into an industrial complex, and another was a ceremony at the North's Rason free trade zone.

China's Premier Wen Jiabao has said Kim was invited to study China's dramatic economic development in the hope that he would use the knowledge to revive his own country's economy.

But analysts say Kim's regime fears the loss of political control that such reforms would entail.

KCNA said Hu supported the North in "firmly preserving socialism and exploring the road of development suited to its reality".

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011