Kim Jong Un ramps up trade diplomacy with a Beijing appearance

SEOUL — At a military parade in Beijing featuring China’s next-generation weaponry, another momentous scene was on display: Chinese President Xi Jinping standing side by side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Their joint appearance on Wednesday at a parade commemorating the end of World War II, is the first time that the leaders of the three countries have appeared together in public. It comes amid growing concern about the increasing collaboration of the “axis of upheaval,” a term that denotes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and their opposition to the U.S.-led world order.

It marks Kim’s first foray into multilateral diplomacy since assuming power in 2011. While in the past the reclusive leader has tended to avoid overseas trips due to security concerns, he arrived Tuesday in Beijing on a heavily armored train known as “The Sun,” stepping out to a welcome that even Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung didn’t get as the last North Korean leader to attend the Victory Day parade in 1959.

“The trip was an undeniable political victory for Kim Jong Un,” said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University. “To be seen standing shoulder to shoulder with two superpowers in China is an incredibly powerful image of propaganda to show to North Korean residents.”

Kim’s growing diplomatic ambitions have in recent years involved a defense pact with Russia and the deployment of North Korean soldiers to the war in Ukraine in exchange for technological and military assistance.

In a statement posted on the website of North Korea’s foreign ministry a day before the parade, Vice Minister Pak Myong Ho accused the U.S. and other Western governments of openly inflicting “tyranny” against “countless countries around the world,” while expressing support for a new balance of power led by Beijing.

Experts at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), a government think tank, say that Kim’s most pressing agenda item in Beijing will be reviving its economic exchange with China, which has slowed in recent years amid Beijing’s frustrations with Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear missile program.

“In economic matters, the importance of China’s assistance is absolute,” INSS researchers wrote in a report published ahead of the parade.

While Moscow in recent years has reportedly violated U.N. sanctions to provide North Korea with assistance ranging from refined petroleum to military drones, China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner, accounting for up to 98% of the latter’s exports in 2023, according to an analysis by the Seoul-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

Noting that trade between North Korea and China currently sits at around 80% of pre-pandemic levels, the INSS researchers highlighted that the shortage of Chinese economic support — and once-steady tourist flows — was being acutely felt in places like the Wonsan Kalma resort, a newly opened beachside vacation destination that Kim called the country’s “greatest achievement” of 2025.

Despite North Korea’s vocal embrace of the so-called “new Cold War” order, Russia and China have been reluctant to do the same, analysts said.

“China doesn’t gain anything by forming a bloc with North Korea,” Park, the professor, said. “Xi Jinping knows all too well that at most, any attempt of this kind will at most be a loose gathering of countries who are positioned against the U.S. without any real power or the cohesiveness of a bloc.”

In a joint statement issued after a meeting in May 2024, Putin and Xi said that the China-Russia partnership is “a more advanced form of interstate interaction compared to the military-political alliances of the Cold War era and not of a bloc or confrontational nature.”

While a trilateral summit between the three leaders is widely regarded as unlikely for this reason, Kim’s appearance in Beijing may, on the other hand, provide the leverage he needs for a potential round two of summits with President Trump.

“I think North Korea may be willing to discuss a rollback of its nuclear program and demanding in return things like a permanent end to any joint U.S.- South Korea military drills or halting the deployment of any strategic assets,” Park said.

Though Trump expressed a willingness to sit down with Kim during a summit with South Korean president Lee Jae Myung last month, Park says that Pyongyang no longer sees the U.S.’ long-standing goal of North Korean denuclearization as a viable starting point — and that Kim’s parade appearance is likely to be seen as yet another vindication of that position.