BEIJING, April 9 (Reuters) - Beijing stands ready to work with North Korea to further improve ties, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a meeting with his North Korean counterpart on a visit to Pyongyang, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Beijing has been trying to draw Pyongyang back into its orbit after ties cooled following the COVID pandemic, which froze exchanges, and as North Korean President Kim Jong Un shored up relations with Moscow by sending troops and weapons in support of Russia's war in Ukraine.
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 Xinhua.
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.
Chinese ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said Wang's visit - scheduled from April 9 to 10 - was an important move to advance relations.
Wang'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.
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 meeting was followed by a visit to Pyongyang in October by China's No.2 official, Premier Li Qiang.
China's exports to North Korea reached a six-year high of $2.3 billion last year, a 25% annual increase, and North Korea in October explicitly endorsed 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 for six years since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
China's flag carrier Air China has also restarted flights between the two capitals. However, the reopened links have not benefited Chinese tourists so far, with bookings available only for some business travellers and exchange students.
(Reporting by Shi Bu, Xiuhao Chen and Ryan Woo; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Sharon Singleton Editing by Alison Williams)
