Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho in Beijing today and told him that China appreciates the North’s “important efforts” toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Wang also said Beijing hopes that a planned meeting between the leaders of North Korea and the United States advances smoothly and that the reasonable security concerns of all sides regarding the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula should be taken into account.
North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho is set to visit Russia, where Ri is expected to talk to senior Russian government officials about the situation on the Korean peninsula, Azerbaijan, where he is likely to attend a ministerial-level meeting of the Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Baku, and other former Soviet republics in the coming days. North Korea in fact has intensified diplomatic efforts ahead of its planned summit with South Korea on April 27 and first-ever high-level talks with the United States possibly by the end of next month.
