North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a congratulatory message to Chinese President Xi Jinping marking the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), pledging to deepen the two countries' partnership and describing a recent bilateral summit as a turning point in relations.
In the message, reported by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday, Kim called last month's Pyongyang summit a "historic occasion of deepening the comradely friendship and trust" between the two leaders, adding that they had reaffirmed their "unshakable will" to advance ties. "It is the steadfast stand of our Party and government to steadily develop the DPRK-China friendly relations with long and historical roots and with socialism as their core," Kim said, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He also described the bilateral relationship as "the common wealth of the peoples of the two countries."
The message follows Xi Jinping's two-day state visit to Pyongyang on June 8–9 — his first trip to North Korea in nearly seven years. During that summit, the two leaders agreed to deepen cooperation across politics, the economy and culture, and adopted what North Korean state media described as a "far-reaching blueprint" for strengthening bilateral ties. Xi also pushed for closer diplomatic, law enforcement and military cooperation. To mark the CCP anniversary, the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang held a banquet attended by senior North Korean officials, where Chinese Ambassador Wang Yajun described the two nations as bound by a "shared destiny" across generations of mutual support.
The warm messaging underscores how central China remains to North Korea's position in the world, even as Pyongyang has drawn significantly closer to Moscow in recent years. North Korea signed a strategic defence agreement with Russia that led to thousands of its troops being deployed in support of Russia's war in Ukraine. Despite that deepening military partnership, China remains by far North Korea's dominant economic partner, accounting for nearly 98 percent of the country's foreign trade in 2024, according to South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance.
The diplomatic signals carry weight at a sensitive moment. On Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha visited Seoul to meet his South Korean counterpart and discuss the fate of North Korean soldiers captured in Ukraine — at least two of whom have reportedly expressed a desire to defect to South Korea. Seoul maintains that North Korean troops are constitutionally regarded as South Korean nationals and has said it would accept any prisoners of war wishing to resettle there. Against this backdrop, Kim's public reaffirmation of China ties serves as a reminder of the layered and often competing alliances shaping security on the Korean Peninsula.