Xi-Kim summit rebalancing chessboard?

John J. Metzler

The lavish welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping received on his recent visit to North Korea stylistically underscored a deep and comradely relationship between the two communist regimes. Xi’s trip to Pyongyang, his first visit in seven years to the secluded socialist state, was nonetheless more about reviving and rebalancing ties with the dictator Kim Jong-un than about political substance.

Xi as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, lavished praise on North Korea, a neighboring state sharing many of China’s cultural traditions. State media reported that both are “socialist countries led by communist parties with traditional friendship, rooted in their shared ideals and beliefs as well as their common goals, and backed by a profound historical foundation, a solid political basis, and strong emotional bonds.”

During the 1950-53 Korean War for example, newly founded People’s Republic of China sent hundreds of thousands of “volunteers” to aid North Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese communist forces sustained huge losses in helping their North Korean comrades, a memory still part of a near-sacred political mantra of relations between both states. China’s former leader Chairman Mao Zedong described the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship as “close as lips and teeth.”

Beijing signed the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance with North Korea, curiously China's only current mutual defense agreement with a foreign country. Moscow also inked a mutual defense treaty with Pyongyang in June 2024.

The quaintly titled Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) aka North Korea remains an isolated and sanctions-constrained state, bound by the consequences of its own rash and illegal nuclear weapons and missile programs. Though China has been decidedly nervous about North Korean nukes and has previously called for denuclearization, the trip did not openly touch on the sensitive issue. The visit was about energizing the old time Communist proletarian revival between Beijing and Pyongyang.

During the visit, North Korea’s Kim commented, “DPRK-China relationship is unbreakable.” It’s not known if Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo-jong or his daughter Ju-ae, heir apparent, met with Xi.

Nonetheless, the North Korean regime, in recent years, has tilted to Russia in a bid to revive its long standing ties with the former Soviets and its curiously cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since 2024, Pyongyang dispatched over 15,000 combat and engineering personnel to help Russia in its bloody Ukraine war. The North Koreans have taken disproportionate casualties likely due to incompetent Russian tactical leadership but Pyongyang still wants in the game. About 6,000 North Korean soldiers were estimated to have been killed or injured, according to Seoul’s spy agency.

Recently, Pyongyang opened a museum and commemorative park honoring the DPRK forces fighting and dying alongside Russians. Putin’s savors his role supporting North Korea, serving as a disruptive force both on the Korean Peninsula as well as a subtle annoyance to China.

In the meantime, Russia has shared sophisticated military hardware with North Korea and has guaranteed diplomatic support for the DPRK’s position in the UN Security Council, in which Moscow is a permanent member with veto powers.

The North Korean leader's moves also reflect his own vainglorious standing as a hereditary dictator and leader of the Kim family regime which has traditionally played its ties and political favors between Russia and China. During my first visit to South Korea in the 1980s, I had the honor to speak with then Prime Minister Lho Shin-yong on this very dilemma. He stated, “North Korea has been fishing in both the ponds of Moscow and Peking … Sometimes the pendulum swings to Peking and other times to Moscow.” He added, “Neither Moscow nor Peking enjoys the right to control North Korea. Whenever Peking or Moscow think they are in control of Pyongyang, then North Korea goes the other way.”

For contemporary China, the issue is more complicated. Xi was accompanied by his defense minister but there was not much public discussion about defense, save for the bromides of “socialist solidarity” between fraternal states, etc. Though China still maintains North Korea’s economic lifeline, Beijing’s economic focus remains on prosperous South Korea. Still, China views the DPRK as a strategic buffer between American forces in South Korea and the Chinese mainland.

“North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile capabilities reduce its reliance on both China and Russia while strengthening its ability to deter or complicate US intervention,” wrote Dr. Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific Security chair of the respected Hudson Institute. He added, “Meanwhile, these capabilities provide Pyongyang with greater coercive leverage over both Washington and Seoul.”

East Asian tensions have hardly eased. As The Korea Times stated editorially, “The implications for South Korea are clear. Seoul should pursue a more consistent and coherent strategy toward strengthening trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan.” Most certainly so.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of “Divided Dynamism The Diplomacy of Separated Nations; Germany, Korea, China.”