North Korea's Kim well enough to meet foreign visitor
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met a senior Chinese official in Pyongyang Friday, Chinese and North Korean media said, in Kim's first reported meeting with a foreign envoy since a suspected stroke in August.
Analysts have said a meeting with a foreign visitor would offer evidence that Kim was well enough to run Asia's only communist dynasty and make decisions about its nuclear arms program.
China's Xinhua news agency and the North's KCNA news agency said Kim met Wang Jiarui, visiting head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department.
North Korea's state KRT television showed 15 still photographs of Wang and Kim, whose trademark paunch looked smaller than a year ago, sitting down for discussions and sharing a toast at a luncheon. Kim's left hand appeared severely swollen in photographs carried on China's Xinhua news agency.
Wang gave Kim a letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao on the occasion of Lunar New Year, KCNA said without offering further details.
The last high-profile reception given by Kim was in June when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Pyongyang, South Korea's Unification Ministry said.
North Korea's state media have issued numerous reports in recent months saying Kim has visited army units, factories and farms. But there has been no proof of when the visits took place.
In undated photos released by North Korea, Kim has been swaddled in padded coats, ski gloves and dark sunglasses. The North has not released video of Kim since the suspected illness leading to speculation in the South that he may still show the lingering effects of the stroke.
Analysts said the meeting with Wang was part of efforts to highlight Kim's firm grip on power as the state heads into a March 8 election of its Supreme People's Assembly when he is expected to be reaffirmed as its supreme military leader.
"That's a major public event he must attend," said Cho Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification, an expert on the inner workings of Pyongyang. "These things are coming because the North is confident about his health."
POSSIBLE SUCCESSOR?
Kim has been conspicuously absent from major events in the past several months that he has attended before.
The most notable was a triumphal celebration in September to mark the anniversary of the state founded by his father Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994 after grooming his son for years to be his successor.
Despite the resumption of frequent reports on Kim's public activities in recent week, doubts about his ailing health have never been fully resolved.
Speculation of his illness was further fuelled last week when South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Kim had picked the youngest of his three known sons, Jong-un, to succeed him and told his communist party about his selection. [ID:nSEO276119]. The news agency quoted an intelligence source for the report.
North Korea and China are celebrating 60 years since they established formal relations and have declared 2009 a "friendship year" between them, said a report on Wang's visit on the Party International Department's website (www.idcpc.org.cn).
China is a key source of aid and energy for its struggling neighbour.
Wang previously visited Pyongyang and met Kim at key moments such as the North Korean leader's secretive visit to Beijing in 2004 and immediately after the North's declaration as a nuclear state in February 2005.
There was no mention of the sputtering nuclear talks in the state media reports.
(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun in Seoul and Lucy Hornby in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie, Ken Wills and Dean Yates)