By Chris Buckley and Jack Kim
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Friday met a senior Chinese official in Pyongyang, China's Xinhua news agency said, in Kim's first reported meeting with a foreign dignitary since a suspected stroke in August.
Analysts have said that a meeting with a foreign visitor would offer evidence that Kim is well enough to run Asia's only communist dynasty and make decisions about its nuclear arms programme.
Xinhua said Kim met Wang Jiarui, visiting head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department. The brief report on Xinhua did not give any details of Kim's state of health.
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 the 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.
North Korea's official media has not yet reported on the meeting with Wang.
Analysts said the meeting with Wang is 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."
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.
SUCCESSOR
Speculation of his llness was further fueled 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. 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.
Wang told Premier Kim Yong-il that "broad common interests are the firm bond of Chinese-North Korean friendship," the department's report said.
It did not mention any remarks by Wang about North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, which Beijing and other regional powers have been seeking to curtail.
But in words that may hint at Chinese frustration with the North's reluctance to implement a disarmament deal, Wang said: "Paying attention to and taking care of the other side's concerns is an important force in deepening the development of Chinese-North Korean relations."
(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun in Seoul and Lucy Hornby in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie and Ken Wills)
