BEIJING, April 9 (Reuters) - Beijing stands ready to work with North Korea to further improve ties, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his North Korean counterpart on Thursday during a visit to Pyongyang, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
Beijing has been trying to draw Pyongyang back into its orbit after ties cooled, with the pandemic freezing exchanges and as North Korean President Kim Jong Un shored up relations with Moscow.
China is ready "to continue consolidating the positive momentum in the development" of bilateral ties, Wang said in a meeting with North Korea's Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, according to an official summary of the meeting released by Wang's ministry.
Wang's last publicly known visit to North Korea as China's foreign minister was in late 2019, following reciprocal visits by the two countries' top leaders earlier that year. A Chinese ministry spokesperson called Wang's trip—scheduled from April 9 to 10—an important move to advance relations.
The two countries have "always trusted and supported each other, and made unremitting efforts to maintain regional and world peace and stability, and to promote each other's development," Wang said, adding that both sides should enhance communication, cooperation and high level exchanges.
He said "the traditional friendship between China and North Korea, forged in blood, will never fade and is unbreakable."
The Chinese foreign minister's Pyongyang visit also comes ahead of an expected summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump next month.
Trump has repeatedly expressed an interest in resuming direct talks with the North Korean leader in his second term, but no meeting has materialised.
'HISTORIC' SUMMIT
Political momentum between China and North Korea gained pace last year, when Kim travelled to Beijing in September on board an armoured train to join Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders for a military parade in the Chinese capital, where Kim met with Xi.
That was followed by a visit to Pyongyang in October by China's No.2 official, Premier Li Qiang.
Wang on Thursday called the Xi-Kim summit "historic" and said it "advanced bilateral relations to a new stage... and is of great and far-reaching significance."
China's exports to North Korea reached a six-year high of $2.3 billion last year and North Korea in October explicitly reiterated Beijing's position on Taiwan, shortly before China's arms white paper dropped calls for "denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula.
Passenger train services between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed in March after being suspended since 2020, while China's flag carrier Air China also restarted some flights between the two capitals.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Shi Bu and Ryan Woo; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Alison Williams and Janane Venkatraman)
