By Liz Lee, Xiuhao Chen and Jack Kim
BEIJING/SEOUL, June 5 (Reuters) - China said on Friday President Xi Jinping would visit North Korea on a two-day trip from June 8, his first in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reassert ties with Pyongyang, its only formal treaty ally.
Xi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, China's foreign ministry said.
"Both sides will use the visit as an opportunity to promote greater development of China-North Korea relations in keeping with the times," spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing.
Beijing has worked to draw Pyongyang back into its fold after the COVID-19 pandemic froze exchanges and Kim deepened ties with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The two countries signed a cooperation and mutual assistance treaty 65 years ago, legally binding each to provide the other with military support if they came under attack.
"The message implicit from the Chinese side is ... we are still the principal actor when it comes to North Korea," said John Delury, a senior fellow of the Asia Society. "One of the audiences is Russia."
Friday's announcement by the international department of the ruling Chinese Communist Party follows Xi's summits in Beijing last month with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kim was a guest at a massive military parade in Beijing last September, travelling to the Chinese capital on his signature green armoured train.
Passenger train services between the capitals resumed in March, after a six-year suspension ushered in by the pandemic, while Air China later restarted flights between them.
Bookings, however, have been limited to some business travellers and exchange students, with Chinese tourists still excluded.
FIRST OVERSEAS TRIP THIS YEAR
Xi's visit to Pyongyang will be his first overseas this year. The 72-year-old, who makes fewer trips abroad, last travelled internationally in late October to South Korea, where he also met Trump.
Trump met Kim three times in his first term and has previously said he would be open to meeting the North Korean leader again.
"At the symbolic level it is important for Xi to keep tabs on what's going on in Pyongyang," said Delury, who said Xi visiting both Koreas within a year would be a "big win" for the peninsula.
"There's a kind of symmetry that the Chinese like to keep up" regarding the two Koreas, he added.
South Korea views the trip solely as high-level bilateral exchanges unaligned to Moscow, an official from the presidential Blue House said.
"We do not interpret this as a coordinated move by the three countries, nor are we sure how it would be linked to the U.S.-China summit," the official said.
Seoul expects Beijing to continue its constructive role on peninsula issues, the Blue House said.
Since Xi became China's top leader in 2012, he has visited North Korea once, and its southern neighbour twice. He also visited Pyongyang in 2008 as vice president, meeting its then leader Kim Jong Il, the father of the current leader.
Kim called for an "exponential" expansion of Pyongyang's atomic arsenal this week when he visited a new factory to make nuclear material, KCNA said.
Experts have linked Kim's site visit to the impending meeting with Xi. Before his September visit to Beijing, Kim inspected plans for a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the "Hwasong-20".
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Liz Lee and Joe Cash in Beijing, Jack Kim, Kyu-seok Shim and Brenda Goh in Seoul; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Kate Mayberry and Clarence Fernandez)
