Kim Jong Il Meets Chinese Leaders

Leaders of two of the world's most secretive countries─China and North Korea─met Wednesday, leaving people in other countries wondering anew how their unusual, unconfirmed-but-visible summit will affect the security and economy of East Asia.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il increased the frequency of his visits to China over the past year. The latest trip, which began Friday, is the third in the past 12 months, preceded by just four trips since he took power in 1994.

So far, the visits to China's relatively more open society have not yet led Mr. Kim to change the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons, its isolationist, state-controlled economy or its withholding of basic rights and freedoms from its 24 million citizens.

But the trips remain an intense source of curiosity in neighboring South Korea and elsewhere. Mr. Kim is perceived by outside analysts to be under enormous pressure to secure Chinese economic aid as well as Beijing's political support for his son to succeed him upon his death. Mr. Kim is 70 years old and his health deteriorated after a stroke-like illness in 2008.

Mr. Kim arrived in Beijing Wednesday morning and met with Chinese leaders in the evening, according to foreign news accounts that tracked his motorcade to the Great Hall of the People, China's main government building. However, accounts varied on whether he met Chinese President Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao.

As in the past, neither officials nor the state media from the two countries confirmed Mr. Kim's meeting with Chinese leaders.

Usually, the two countries don't discuss Mr. Kim's visits until he returns to North Korea. However, Mr. Wen earlier this week told South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that Mr. Kim was in China to learn about economic development. Mr. Lee has repeatedly said North Korea should embrace China's style of economic reform.

After several of Mr. Kim's previous trips, China also said he was there to learn about its economy. Each time, news stories and outside analysts speculated that Mr. Kim might open the North's economy and attempt to lift the country out of poverty.

Despite the official silence about the latest trip, Mr. Kim's presence in China has been well-covered by foreign journalists and by Chinese citizens using Internet sites to post pictures and comments about seeing him.

One woman with a Chinese state-run dance troupe that performed for Mr. Kim in Yangzhou posted smartphone pictures of the event a day later. And an employee of an electronics company in Nanjing on Tuesday uploaded video images of Mr. Kim arriving at his factory.

That video intrigued North Korean analysts and observers in South Korea because it appeared to show that Mr. Kim was accompanied by a woman named Kim Ok, who has long been known to be his consort and is rumored to be his fifth wife. It wasn't clear whether Mr. Kim had taken her along on previous trips.

Over the past few days, Mr. Kim visited a Chinese auto maker, an electronics manufacturer, a solar-energy company and a discount store. At the discount store, he asked a clerk for salad dressing, according to a South Korean newspaper.

Separately, the U.S. envoy for North Korea human-rights issues, Robert King, arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday for a first-ever visit. Mr. King is attempting to assess North Korea's claims that it is willing to accept American food assistance again, which it cut off in 2008 after becoming upset at Korean-speaking monitors the U.S. sent in to assure food was reaching the needy.

In a sign of North Korea's wariness of the visit, its state media did not publicize Mr. King's arrival, unlike previous trips to Pyongyang by U.S. officials and former officials or even the visit this week of representatives from the New York-based Asia Society.