Kim Jong-un's interests seen shaping North Korean premier's China trip

North Korean Premier Pak Thae-song, on his visit to China this month, toured a string of Chinese showcases in logistics, transport, energy and tourism, an itinerary analysts say bears the imprint of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's economic priorities.

Pak, who directs policy at home as the North's top economic official, arrived in Beijing on Friday at the head of a diplomatic delegation. He attended ceremonies for the 65th anniversary of the two countries' Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and met Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders. On the final day of the trip, Sunday, Pak concentrated on economic sites in Beijing and Tianjin.

His first stop was the Beijing Rail Transit Command Center. There, the delegation asked detailed questions about how transfers work and how the rail network is run, China's state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The interest in rail was not incidental. Kim has taken a keen interest in South Korea's KTX high-speed trains and admitted at the April 2018 summit at Panmunjom that the North's transport falls short of the South's.

"People who went to the PyeongChang Olympics tell me the high-speed trains are excellent," Kim said at the time.

Just how far behind is striking. Some North Korean trains move at a jogger's pace.

"On some of the North's most run-down rail sections, trains ran at just 10 to 20 kilometers per hour [6 to 12 miles per hour]," said Ahn Byung-min, a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University who has surveyed North Korean rail lines in person. "Given that elite marathon runners average 20 to 21 kilometers per hour, it is easy to see how backward the rail network is."

Chronic economic troubles and sanctions have left the North with few reliable flights, but North's leader also favors the rails for security. He has taken his personal train to the allied capitals of China and Russia, and to Hanoi for his 2019 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. At home, Pyongyang began running new trams in September 2018, and Kim visited the plant that built them and rode a prototype himself.

The stop that drew the most notice was a Great Wall Motor plant in Tianjin. Kim is a well-known car enthusiast. North Korean media often show him in top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz Maybach sedans and SUVs, and in August 2020 he drove a Lexus SUV to inspect flood damage. Back in 2010, when he was being groomed as successor, high-performance Audi models, the R8 and S8, were spotted entering Pyongyang by way of China, and analysts at the time guessed they were cars for Kim or his older brother, Kim Jong-chol.

His fascination with cars has surfaced in his summitry, too. When the North Korean leader first met Trump — in Singapore on June 12, 2018 — the U.S. president showed off his armored limousine, known as Cadillac One or "the Beast," and Kim leaned in to peer inside. In June 2024, he drove an Aurus, a Russian luxury car that Russian President Vladimir Putin had given him, as the two chatted.

His enthusiasm runs to machines of every kind.

"Kim Jong-un's interest in cars drew no distinction between models," said a high-ranking North Korean-born citizen who requested anonymity. "In the early years of his rule, when work on transporter-erector-launcher vehicles was in full swing, he could not wait for the scheduled morning inspection and drove out to the site at dawn, which sent the plant scrambling."

State media have shown him at the controls of tanks, aircraft and even a forklift.

Pak also toured the Port of Tianjin, one of China's biggest logistics hubs and a showcase "smart port." It uses AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G networks and the latest cargo-handling equipment to automate and streamline loading, shipping, customs and transport. That is a model likely to appeal to North Korea, which has large ports of its own at Rason, Wonsan and Nampo.

In Tianjin, Pak also chatted with Chinese officials as he took in the night view along the Haihe River. Tourism is one of Kim's signature projects. North Korea is building large resort complexes to draw foreign visitors, among them the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area; Samjiyon; and the Masikryong and Mount Kumgang zones.

At the Wonsan Kalma resort in late 2024, just after a Workers' Party plenary meeting, Kim pressed officials to develop tourism and called it another engine for lifting local and national economies. He told them to knit the Mount Kumgang and Kalma coastal areas into a single tourism-and-culture district and to develop mountain tourism in Samjiyon and tourist resources elsewhere.

Energy is another sore point. North Korea's power shortages are chronic, and recycling has become a policy focus. Pak visited a green low-carbon demonstration base run by China Resources Recycling Group in Tianjin, which handles scrap metal; used electronics; electric-vehicle batteries; wind and solar equipment; and plastics. North Korea counts UN carbon-credit schemes and resource recycling among its economic tasks.

Analysts expect the tour to translate into cooperation.

"Overseas inspections by senior North Korean officials, including the premier, are reported to Kim Jong-un in detail, so they most likely reflect his interests," said Oh Kyung-seob, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. "As the North draws closer to China, the two are likely to take up cooperation in the areas Pak Thae-song inspected."

BY CHUNG YEONG-GYO [[email protected]]