Reclusive leader's secret visit to China could bring improved ties.
Published:
3 June 2000 y., Saturday
In his first venture outside Stalinist North Korea in 17 years, reclusive leader Kim Jong Il slipped into China this week to discuss his upcoming summit with South Korea's president, tour a computer company and even praise China's capitalist reforms.
Kim, who arrived Monday, was amazed by computers, was hugged
repeatedly by his Chinese hosts and revealed that he had stopped
drinking and smoking, China's state-run press said Thursday.In television footage of a meeting with China's President Jiang Zemin,Kim sported a bouffant hairdo and a slightly ill-fitting gray Mao suit. Jiang wore a Western-style suit and tie.
Kim's three-day trip, made just two weeks before he is scheduled to meet his South Korean counterpart, Kim Dae Jung, in a historic summit in Pyongyang, provided the first glimpse of a man who runs
one of the world's last hard-line communist states. It also provided some insight into a leader who reportedly has a mercurial temper and a weak physical constitution.
Kim, 58, appeared healthy, however, and was shown on China's state-run television news Thursday night kissing Jiang and engaging in an elaborate hug of a nonplussed Hu Jintao, China's vice president.China's government acknowledged Kim's stealth diplomacy mission Thursday, after he was already back home, and gave no explanation for the secrecy.
Šaltinis:
Mercury News
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Twenty five years after the Chernobyl explosion, radiation contamination continues to haunt the survivors as it spreads to the next generation.
more »
A British man builds a model of the retired U.S. aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid in New York, made entirely out of Lego pieces.
more »
A researcher at MIT has used his technical skills to give chocolate bunnies and eggs a run for their money. David Carr built a new type of 3D printer that uses chocolate to give a new face to Easter treats.
more »
Storm chasers captured two tornadoes on tape as they touched down in the midwestern United States- continuing a recent onslaught of twisters that have killed dozens and destroyed swathes of land and property.
more »
A small factory in Brazil's northeast is bringing smiles to the faces of environmentalists by turning used toothpaste tubes into furniture and roof tiles.
more »
The Lindel family are attempting to live a low carbon life as part of an experiment to cut their carbon emissions from the annual average of seven tonnes per person to only one tonne.
more »
Three days of severe storms and tornadoes in the southern United States have killed at least 39 people.
more »
Disagreements over the stalemated NATO military mission in Libya persist on the first day of the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Berlin.
more »
Tourists go head-to-head with locals in water fights as celebrates its New Year.
more »
Six thousand Lego lovers and a crane create the world's largest Lego tower in Sao Paulo.
more »