Top Chinese diplomat visits N. Korea: KCNA

A top Chinese official arrived in North Korea on Monday for talks on border-related issues, Pyongyang‘s state media said.

In a one-paragraph dispatch, the Korean Central News Agency

(KCNA) confirmed that Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin began the trip, leading a Chinese delegation to the third joint committee meeting regarding the border.

It stopped short of providing details including Liu’s itinerary.

He became the first known high-level Chinese official to make a trip there in eight months.

His trip demonstrates that the two sides have kept routine exchanges alive despite Pyongyang‘s continued provocations. The U.N. Security Council, in which China is a permanent member, has yet to decide the level of punishment for North Korea for its fifth nuclear test last month.

Liu made his previous trip to North Korea in February 2014, during which he conveyed Beijing’s clear message that it sticks to the principle of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile, a group of former U.S. diplomats held a closed-door “Track 2” meeting with senior North Korean officials, including Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol, in Kuala Lumpur on the weekend.

In February, China‘s chief nuclear envoy Wu Dawei traveled to Pyongyang but produced no breakthrough in efforts to stop Pyongyang’s provocative acts and bring it back to the negotiating table. (Yonhap)