Sino-NK

PRC Premier Li Qiang meets with North Korean President of State Affairs Kim Jong-un, October 2025. | Image: The Voice of Korea.

October saw an escalation in high-level China-DPRK diplomatic exchanges to mark the Chinese National Day holiday and anniversary of the PRC’s founding, as well as the 80th anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) with the first visit by a Chinese premier to North Korea in 16 years.

Premier Li Qiang’s trip to Pyongyang from 9-11 October included talks with North Korean President of State Affairs Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on 9 October, and a meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Premier Pak Thae-song, on 11 October.

The talks represent a significant increase in high-level diplomatic exchanges between China and North Korea following the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim in Beijing on 4 September, the first in more than six years.

Li had met with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Sun-hui in Beijing less than two weeks prior to his visit to Pyongyang, holding discussions presumed to have included plans for his subsequent trip to meet with Kim, although China’s Foreign Ministry did not officially announce Li’s DPRK visit until 7 October.

On arrival at Pyongyang Airport, Li described the two nations as “socialist neighbours connected by mountains and rivers”, before offering what has become a stock line for CCP cadres discussing Sino-North Korean relations since Kim’s September trip to Beijing. Li stated that the PRC remained “ready to work with the DPRK to follow through on the important consensus reached by the two top leaders, [to] strengthen strategic communication, maintain close exchanges, and push for friendly cooperation between the two countries”.

A similar formulation appeared in Xi’s congratulatory message sent to Kim, the WPK, and the North Korean people on 10 October, affirming that “China is ready to work with the DPRK to strengthen strategic communication, deepen practical cooperation, enhance coordination and collaboration, and further advance bilateral relations”.

In Xinhua’s coverage of the meeting between Li and Kim, it was reported the North Korean leader emphasised that the DPRK “firmly supports the One-China principle”. The meeting coincided with Taiwan’s National Day, during which President Lai Ching-te provoked CCP ire by stating the island remains a light of hope “for every person still living in darkness under authoritarian rule”.

Li also attended a mass gymnastic display at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang attended by leaders of current and former socialist nations including the head of the United Russia Party Dimitry Medvedev and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam. Medvedev’s visit to Pyongyang marked the latest high-level exchange between Russia and North Korea amid a recent resurgence in bi-lateral relations.

Li was also witness to a military parade on Kim Il-sung Square showcasing Hwasongpho-20 intercontinental ballistic missiles, “the most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system in the DPRK”, according to KCNA. When the DPRK fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles on 22 October, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun gave what has become a recent stock, neutral response when pressed for comment by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency: “China’s position and policy on the Korea Peninsula issue maintains continuity and consistency. On relevant launch activities, we have no new comments to make.”

In a sign of recent improvement in China-DPRK relations, the WPK Central Committee newspaper Rodong Sinmun carried an op-ed by Chinese Ambassador Wang Yajun, the first of its kind in four years, published the day before Li’s arrival in Pyongyang. The article celebrated the Sino-DPRK alliance and its historical foundations, referencing their shared anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle. Wang wrote how he had visited the secret camp on Mount Paektu, the Samjiyon Revolutionary History Museum, and the site of the Battle of Pochonbo, all significant sites along the Sino-DPRK border tied to the hagiography of Kim Il-sung.

At a banquet held to mark the WPK’s anniversary on 8 October, Ambassador Wang said in a speech that “cultural exchanges between China and North Korea serve as a solid bridge connecting the hearts of the two peoples” following China’s decision to send the Shanghai Art Troupe. Their second of two performances of the spy-war dance drama The Eternal Radio Waves prompted a 16-minute standing ovation by the mainly North Korean audience.

In Beijing, the DPRK Embassy led by Ambassador Ri Ryong-nam hosted its own WPK anniversary reception, attended by PSC member Cai Qi, China’s third-ranked official after Li.

The CCP’s decision to send Li, its second-ranked official after Xi, to the latest decennial anniversary of the founding of the WPK in North Korea indicates a further sign of recent improvement in China-DPRK relations following Kim’s visit to Beijing in September.

Li’s visit also represents a significant upgrade, in terms of CCP seniority, compared to recent decennial WPK milestones. For the 70th WPK anniversary in 2015, China dispatched CCP Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) member and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan to Pyongyang, then ranked fifth in the CCP. At the time, Xi was yet to meet Kim amid strained ties following the young North Korean leader’s decision to conduct a nuclear test in February, 2013 – just weeks before Xi’s unveiling as China’s new leader.

A decade earlier, China sent Vice Premier Wu Yi, the most senior woman in the Chinese leadership at the time yet ranked below the PSC and its top-nine ranking CCP officials. Under then President Hu Jintao, China’s relationship with North Korea and leader Kim Jong-il had remained muted and less proximate, with Beijing heading six-party nuclear talks which ultimately failed the following year.

The recent sudden escalation in high-level China-DPRK interactions comes as Moscow has overtaken Beijing as the main partner to Pyongyang after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a security pact with Kim last year.

US President Donald Trump said he was “open” to meeting with Kim ahead of the APEC Summit in South Korea in late October, although no such meeting took place. The first interactions between the two leaders during Trump’s first term provoked a flurry of prior meetings between Kim and Xi in 2018. However, Trump’s most recent comments came after Xi and Li’s recent meetings with Kim, and therefore appeared unconnected to the recent scaling up of high-level China-DPRK relations.

Dandong-Sinuiju Postal Route Reopens

Amid Party anniversary celebrations in the North Korean capital, the most significant update in Sino-DPRK relations came in the form of a brief, two-line announcement made on 9 October by the PRC’s State Post Bureau, stating land postal services between Dandong and Sinuiju had formally reopened on 25 September.

Binary border cities have been regularly covered by Sino-NK, and here the postal reconnection of Dandong and Sinuiju, previously severed due to COVID-19, marked the most concrete, local-level manifestation of the practical cooperation repeatedly cited since Xi and Kim’s September Beijing meeting.

Korean War Commemorations

The CPV martyrs’ cemetery in Anju, South Pyongan province. | Image: The Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang.

In late October, focus shifted to commemorating the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPVs) and the anniversary of their crossing of the Yalu River 75 years ago, marking the entrance of the PRC into the Korean War, thereby saving North Korea as a sovereign state. This year’s celebrations, amid a recent improvement and increase in bilateral exchanges, included a long list of commemorative activities held in both countries:

In addition to the overarching theme of Sino-North Korean fraternity, those of memorial preservation and CPV spirit maintenance are worth noting from October’s Korean War commemoration events.

At the 22 October ceremony marking the commencement of renovation works at the CPV martyrs’ cemetery in Sinpyong, it was announced that five other CPV cemeteries would undergo similar upgrades. Ambassador Wang said the restoration of CPV martyrs’ cemeteries in the DPRK comprise one mode of the increased bilateral cooperation agreed upon “by the top leaders of both parties and countries [in September]”, marking the centrality of monument-related politics of memory in Korean War narratives for both countries.

Wang remarked that these facilities will continue to “commemorate our martyrs, promote their spirit, and perpetuate for generations Sino-DPRK friendship”. The notion of invoking the spirit of the People’s Volunteers has become increasingly apparent in CCP rhetoric under Xi in recent years, as reported by Sino-NK.

Kim Jong-un Marks History of CPVs

Kim Jong-un visits the CPV martyrs’ cemetery in Hoechang, South Pyongan province | Image: KCNA.

On 25 October, KCNA reported that Kim, a day prior, had visited the CPV martyrs’ cemetery in Hoechang County, South Pyongan Province. The timing of his attendance at the cemetery meant there were no interactions with Chinese Embassy staff who visited the following day. During the visit, Kim offered a bouquet of flowers, and paid tribute to the grave of Mao Anying, son of Mao Zedong, killed in a UN air raid on North Korea in 1950.

The same day, Kim gave a more widely reported speech inaugurating the construction of a new memorial dedicated to KPA soldiers killed in Russia’s Kursk region following their deployment to the Ukraine conflict, a key catalyst for the recent marked improvement in Russia-DPRK ties.

In a similar vein to his comments on the CPVs, Kim remarked that the construction of the new Korean People’s Army (KPA) memorial marked “a grand undertaking for making immortal the ennobling spirit of the martyrs, who returned to the embrace of their motherland with victory they won at the cost of their lives”.

That Kim’s visit to the new KPA memorial eclipsed that to the CPVs, with no KCNA coverage of the latter, indicates the relative immediacy of the KPA’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict, and the present primacy accorded to the Russia-DPRK alliance, albeit amid clear recent improvements in Sino-North Korea ties.