PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea's leader rarely greets visiting leaders at the airport. But when Chinese President Hu Jintao touched down for a three-day summit that ends today, Pyongyang pulled out all the stops.
Trailing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on the tarmac at Pyongyang International Airport were the nation's prime minister and defense minister and dozens of other senior Communist Party leaders. Soldiers goose-stepped, and an honor guard fired a 21-gun salute.
The visit by Pyongyang's closest ally has provided the regime with an opportunity to glorify its role and reinforce many of the core themes its people hear from birth.
Extensive coverage on state-run television and newspapers has hammered home the message that this powerful neighbor, allied in socialism, acknowledges the importance of its relationship with North Korea and recognizes the greatness of North Korea's leadership, past and present.
It has also underscored that Pyongyang is not internationally isolated, and that the Chinese-North Korean friendship forged in battle against the Japanese and Americans more than half a century ago will remain strong at a time when the country is under pressure from all sides.
A well-briefed Hu showed proper respect for the touchstones of North Korean political power. After a bearhug with Kim at the airport, he stopped and bowed to each of the three military services and greeted leaders of North Korea's Workers' Party. He also placed a wreath in honor of the country's late founder, Kim Il Sung, who is afforded near-godlike status here.
Behind the scenes, however, Hu was expected to deliver a pointed message concerning nuclear weaponry: that China is North Korea's biggest donor and doesn't tend to ask for much in return, but that it now wants North Korea's cooperation in six-nation talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
"China's way of dealing with North Korea in public is to try and be nice and smooth," said Chu Shulong, a professor of international relations at Beijing's Qinghua University. "But in private, we make the context very clear."
It would be in China's interest to help pave the way for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. Further progress would also help its relations with Washington, strained by China's rising trade surplus and slow progress in freeing up its currency.
