SEOUL—China invited North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who began his seventh trip there on Friday, to learn more about its economic development, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Sunday.
Messrs. Wen and Lee discussed Mr. Kim's visit during a meeting in Japan ahead of a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Mr. Wen told Mr. Lee that China invited Mr. Kim so that he gets "an opportunity to understand China's development" and use that knowledge for North Korea's own development, according to a statement issued by Mr. Lee's office. Chinese officials offered a similar explanation for trips that Mr. Kim made there in 2001 and 2006.
North Korea initiated some economic reforms in 2002 that some analysts attributed to the 2001 trip, but it later pulled back most of them, including plans to create a joint industrial zone on its border with China. No major changes happened after the 2006 trip, though Mr. Kim ventured all the way to Shenzhen, the booming factory city that borders Hong Kong in China's southeast.
Mr. Kim, the 70-year-old dictator who has led North Korea since 1994, is reportedly afraid of flying and entered China's Jilin province by train on Friday. On Sunday, his train went from Jilin's provincial capital of Changchung to Yangzhou, a city near Shanghai.
Though Mr. Kim rarely travels, the current trip is his third to China in the past year, a period in which Mr. Kim has accelerated efforts to prepare a succession plan for his third son, Kim Jong Eun, to take power upon his death.
For months, South Korean media speculated that the younger Mr. Kim, who was publicly revealed to the North Korean public for the first time in September, would soon travel to China himself. Much of the day Friday, South Korean media reported that it was Kim Jong Eun aboard the armored train that entered China earlier in the day. South Korean government officials late Friday said they received information that it was Kim Jong Il making the trip, instead.
While Mr. Wen confirmed to Mr. Lee that the elder Mr. Kim was making the visit, Mr. Lee's office didn't offer any other specifics on the dictator's itinerary or his exact location. There was also no word whether Kim Jong Eun is with his father.
A spokesman for Mr. Lee said Mr. Wen emphasized the importance of peace in the Korean peninsula as well as a need for improvement in the relationship between the two Koreas during the meeting. Mr. Wen also added that China said it will work to create an environment for inter-Korean dialogue and he made clear his opposition to North Korea's nuclear weapons development during the meeting, the spokesman for Mr. Lee said.
During Mr. Kim's previous visits to China, neither the North Korean government nor the Chinese government made any statements about his whereabouts until after he had departed.
However, South Korean, Japanese and Chinese reporters have routinely tailed Mr. Kim's entourage, which is highly visible because of the security detail and disruption caused along Chinese rail lines by his train.
Mr. Kim visited Dalian and Beijing last May on a trip focused on making economic deals. In August, he made a trip designed to remind North Koreans of his father, Kim Il Sung, the country's founder and ruler for four decades. Kim Jong Il visited cities in Jilin province where his father first learned communist ideology and that were key to the myth of his father as a liberator who returned to North Korea to help free it from Japanese rule.
