Xi Jinping to Visit North Korea for First Time Since 2019

Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Pyongyang on June 8-9 for his first visit to North Korea in nearly seven years, Chinese state media confirmed on June 4 [1]. The two-day state visit, at the invitation of Kim Jong Un, comes as Beijing is working to rebalance a relationship that has shifted under the weight of North Korea's deepening military partnership with Russia and the collapse of international sanctions enforcement.

The trip is Xi's first overseas visit of 2026, following his recent hosting of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Beijing [2]. Its timing — one day after Pyongyang revealed a new uranium enrichment facility and Kim vowed to grow his nuclear forces "at an exponential rate" — frames the visit as both an assertion of China's relevance and a concession to the new realities on the Korean Peninsula [3].

What Happened in 2019 — and What Didn't

Xi's last visit to Pyongyang, on June 20-21, 2019, was itself a milestone: the first trip by a Chinese head of state to North Korea since Hu Jintao's visit 14 years earlier [4]. The 2019 summit came amid a flurry of high-level diplomacy — Kim had met Xi four times in 2018-2019 and was shuttling between summits with Trump — and it produced broad commitments to strengthen bilateral ties and advance a "political settlement" of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue [4].

But those commitments remained vague. No specific agreements on trade, aid, or denuclearization steps were announced publicly. Within months, the U.S.-DPRK Hanoi summit collapsed without a deal [5], and the diplomatic window closed. The COVID-19 pandemic then sealed North Korea's borders for years, cutting off nearly all movement of people and most trade.

The measurable outcome of the 2019 era of engagement: North Korea's estimated nuclear arsenal grew from roughly 25 warheads in 2019 to approximately 50 by 2025, according to a March 2026 Congressional Research Service report, which assessed Pyongyang had accumulated enough fissile material for up to 90 warheads [3]. Whatever diplomatic benefits the summits produced, verifiable denuclearization was not among them.

The Trade Lifeline: $2.74 Billion and Counting

China's economic relationship with North Korea collapsed during the pandemic and has since recovered to near pre-pandemic levels. Bilateral trade fell from $2.87 billion in 2019 to just $300 million in 2021 as North Korea imposed extreme border closures [6]. It then rebounded sharply: $890 million in 2022, $2.29 billion in 2023, and $2.74 billion in 2025 [6][7].

Source: KOTRA / Chinese Customs Data via NK News

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

China now accounts for roughly 95% of North Korea's reported merchandise trade, a level of dependence that has increased over the past two decades and reached its highest recorded level in recent years [7]. The composition of that trade is telling: North Korea's top exports to China include human hair extensions ($180 million in 2024), tungsten ores ($31 million), and electrical energy ($22 million) [8] — a profile shaped by sanctions that ban North Korean coal, iron ore, textiles, and seafood exports. Chinese exports to North Korea are dominated by food, fuel, and industrial goods.

The key category that trade data does not capture is fuel. The United States has sanctioned Chinese companies for facilitating illicit ship-to-ship transfers of an estimated 1.6 million barrels of refined oil to North Korea, far exceeding the UN-imposed cap of 500,000 barrels per year [9].

Workers, Remittances, and the Sanctions Gap

UN Security Council Resolution 2397, passed in 2017, required all member states to repatriate North Korean workers by the end of 2019. China publicly committed to compliance but never fully followed through [10].

North Korean workers have continued to staff textile factories and seafood processing plants in northeastern China. In January 2024, the scale of these operations became visible when several thousand North Korean workers in the Chinese border city of Helong went on strike over unpaid wages, after discovering that their earnings had been sent directly to the Workers' Party of Korea without their consent [11].

The labor deployments have since accelerated. In April 2026, an estimated 100-200 North Korean workers crossed into China through Dandong each day over a five-day period, with projections that roughly 10,000 workers could enter within two to three months [12]. The overseas labor program historically generated hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the North Korean government, with the bulk of wages remitted to the state rather than to workers themselves [13].

These arrangements operate in a sanctions enforcement vacuum. In March 2024, Russia vetoed the renewal of the UN Panel of Experts — the body responsible for monitoring compliance with North Korea sanctions — effectively ending independent international oversight as of April 30, 2024 [10].

The Nuclear Question: Buffer State Logic vs. Denuclearization

North Korea's disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility on June 3 — the day before China announced Xi's visit — was itself a signal. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff assessed the site as a centrifuge hall at what experts believe is an additional facility at or near Yongbyon [3]. North Korea now operates at least four uranium enrichment facilities [3]. Kim Jong Un used the occasion to call for expanding nuclear forces "at an exponential rate" [14].

Source: Congressional Research Service / SIPRI

Data as of Mar 1, 2026CSV

China's official position still calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But Beijing's November 2025 white paper on arms control and nonproliferation broke with precedent by omitting any explicit reference to denuclearizing the peninsula — a shift that analysts at Foreign Policy and Brookings described as a "quiet retreat" [15][16].

The structural argument for why China tolerates, and in some analyses benefits from, a nuclear North Korea has been made by scholars at RAND, Brookings, and elsewhere for years [16][17]. The logic: North Korea serves as a buffer state between China and the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. A nuclear-armed North Korea keeps the United States focused on peninsular security rather than directing resources toward Taiwan or the South China Sea. Regime collapse in Pyongyang — the most likely consequence of maximalist pressure — would create a humanitarian crisis on China's border and raise the prospect of a unified, U.S.-allied Korea.

"Beijing is undoubtedly sincere about desiring a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula," Brookings analysts have written, "but maintaining peace and stability on China's doorstep has received a much higher ranking than denuclearization" [16].

Critics of engagement point to the record: no summit, agreement, or period of diplomatic engagement has produced verifiable denuclearization steps from North Korea. The six-party talks (2003-2009), the Trump-Kim summits (2018-2019), and every Xi-Kim meeting have all failed to reverse the trajectory of arsenal growth. Sanctions skeptics argue that each round of diplomacy instead bought Pyongyang time to advance its weapons programs while securing economic relief from China [17].

Defenders of engagement counter that the alternative — isolation and maximum pressure — was tested during 2016-2017 and produced an acceleration of missile and nuclear tests rather than concessions. They argue that China's diplomatic involvement, however imperfect, remains the only realistic channel for managing risk on the peninsula [16].

North Korea's Economy: Growth on Paper, Inflation in Practice

North Korea's economic picture is more complex than the usual narrative of collapse suggests. South Korea's Bank of Korea estimated roughly 4% GDP growth in 2024, driven in part by expanded ties with Russia and a manufacturing sector that grew 7.6% [18]. GDP stood at approximately $26 billion in 2024, or about $1,000 per capita [18].

But those topline numbers mask a severe currency and inflation crisis. The North Korean won has fallen from approximately 8,000 per U.S. dollar in mid-2024 to roughly 36,000 per dollar by mid-2025 [18]. Rice prices have more than doubled in consecutive years, reaching about 19,000 won per kilogram compared with roughly 5,000 two years prior [18]. Corn prices — a closer proxy for food security among ordinary North Koreans — have been more stable, and analysts at the Korea Economic Institute of America assessed that famine conditions were not imminent as of late 2025 [18].

North Korea's military exports to Russia — conventional weapons and ammunition that analysts say generate revenue not captured in official trade data — have become a significant economic lifeline. The country's deployment of troops to Russia's war in Ukraine, initially numbering around 12,000 in late 2024, expanded to an estimated 25,000-30,000 by mid-2025 [19][20]. Pyongyang confirmed the deployments in April 2025 [21], and in April 2026, Kim Jong Un inaugurated a war memorial museum commemorating North Korean soldiers' involvement in the conflict [19].

Russia in the Room: Why Xi Is Really Going

The Russia factor is central to understanding this visit. North Korea's deepening military partnership with Moscow — troops on the ground in Ukraine, weapons shipments, and a mutual defense treaty signed in 2024 — has given Kim Jong Un an alternative patron for the first time in decades [20][22].

"China has never quite accepted North Korea's status as a nuclear power and worries about losing influence in the country to Russia," Foreign Policy reported [22]. The visit is, in this reading, less about denuclearization than about reasserting China's primacy in the relationship.

The argument for Chinese leverage is real but limited. Russia can provide military hardware and security guarantees, but it cannot offer North Korea a development model or the kind of economic integration that only China can provide [22]. North Korea's trade dependence on China — 95% of its reported commerce — gives Beijing structural influence that Moscow cannot replicate.

But that influence has not translated into policy concessions. China has not used its economic leverage to extract denuclearization steps, limit nuclear tests, or even slow the expansion of Pyongyang's arsenal. The question analysts are asking is whether Xi's visit will change that calculus — or simply ratify the status quo.

Regional Fallout: Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington

The visit comes at a moment of sharp divergence in China's relationships across Northeast Asia.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung visited Beijing in January 2026 and proposed four cooperation initiatives related to the Korean Peninsula, including a Seoul-Pyongyang-Beijing high-speed rail line and joint tourism development [23]. Lee reportedly sought Chinese help in mediating tensions with the North, but the request was notably absent from both sides' post-summit statements [23].

China-Japan relations are in their worst state in years. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's November 2025 warning that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could pose an "existential crisis for Japan" triggered a diplomatic freeze, with Beijing refusing high-level contact unless Takaichi retracts her remarks [24]. The 2025-2026 China-Japan diplomatic crisis means Tokyo has limited channels to register objections to Xi's Pyongyang visit.

Previous Xi-Kim summits have prompted measured but concrete responses from the region. South Korea and Japan have historically responded with calls for stronger sanctions enforcement, enhanced missile defense coordination, and diplomatic protests through multilateral forums. The current political dynamics — a South Korean president seeking to engage China and a Japanese prime minister frozen out by Beijing — constrain the range of likely responses.

Washington's position remains defined by the broader U.S.-China competition. The Trump administration, which has pursued its own diplomatic track with both Beijing and Pyongyang, has not publicly commented on the planned visit.

What Would Real Progress Look Like?

Analysts who study China's incentive structure largely agree on what verifiable denuclearization would require: a freeze on fissile material production, monitored by international inspectors; a declaration of all nuclear sites; and a phased dismantlement process with reciprocal sanctions relief. China would need to condition economic support on compliance — a step Beijing has consistently refused to take because of its overriding interest in regime stability [16][17].

The record suggests that China's rational interests point away from this approach. A nuclear-armed North Korea that depends on Chinese trade is, from Beijing's perspective, a manageable problem. A denuclearizing North Korea that demands economic reform and outside inspectors introduces uncertainty about regime survival — and regime collapse remains China's nightmare scenario [17].

Xi's visit to Pyongyang will produce statements about friendship, cooperation, and peace. Whether it produces anything that alters the trajectory of North Korea's nuclear program is a separate question — and the weight of evidence points toward no.