North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets with top Chinese official

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has held talks with Wang Huning, China’s fourth-highest-ranked official, and pledged to deepen ties with Beijing, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reports.

Wang, a Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee member, is leading a Chinese delegation to Pyongyang that arrived Wednesday.

Thursday’s high-level summit is the latest in a series of meetings between Beijing and Pyongyang following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea in June, the first in seven years. They are being seen as China’s efforts to reinforce its influence over its traditional ally as North Korea’s ties with Russia grow.

Though Pyongyang has drawn extremely close to Moscow in recent years, including signing a strategic defence agreement that saw thousands of North Korean troops deployed to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, China remains North Korea’s largest economic partner.

Kim and Wang said they would work to implement the agreement reached between China and North Korea during Xi’s visit.

During that summit , Xi and Kim adopted what North Korean state media described as a “far-reaching blueprint” for strengthening “the most powerful and strategic relations”.

Xi pushed for closer diplomatic, law enforcement and military cooperation with North Korea, according to Chinese state media.

In his meeting with Wang this week, Kim said it was the neighbouring nations’ “steadfast policy … to more vigorously develop the traditional friendly and cooperative relations”, KCNA reported.

Wang said that China’s “firm support for the cause of Korean socialism led by Comrade General Secretary Kim Jong Un will never be changed”.

During the trip, the Chinese delegation visited a memorial site dedicated to Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War, a Workers’ Party cadre training school, and a mausoleum where the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are preserved, KCNA reported.

Earlier in the trip, Wang met with Jo Yong Won, a top official in North Korea’s Workers’ Party, where he also pledged “the will of the Chinese party and the government” to carry out what Xi and Kim agreed to last month.