BEIJING - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has met with China's No. 4 official, Wang Huning, and vowed to boost bilateral cooperation as the two countries recently commemorated the 65th anniversary of the signing of a mutual assistance treaty, Pyongyang's state-run media said Friday.
During their meeting Thursday in Pyongyang, Kim said the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance has "played an important role in defending the basic interests of the two countries and ensuring the regional and global peace and security," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
It is the "steadfast policy" of North Korea's ruling party and the government to "more vigorously develop the traditional friendly and cooperative relations" with China in several fields based on the treaty's spirit and "in line with the requirement of the changing times," Kim was quoted as telling Wang by KCNA.
The treaty, signed on July 11, 1961, commits each country to provide immediate military and other support if the other comes under armed attack.
Wang, who is ranked No. 4 in the Chinese Communist Party leadership and serves as the country's top political adviser, expressed Beijing's readiness to "expand and develop the mutual collaboration," the news agency said.
The senior official, who is leading a delegation of Chinese government officials and Communist Party members, is on a three-day visit to North Korea through Friday.
On Thursday, the group visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the embalmed bodies of North Korea's two former leaders -- Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il -- lie in state, a cemetery of Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War as well as a training school for cadres of the Workers' Party of Korea and attended a reception.
Wang's trip was the latest in a series of bilateral high-level exchanges, following North Korean Premier Pak Thae Song's visit to Beijing last week and Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Pyongyang in June.
Bilateral ties have improved recently after apparently cooling over North Korea's deepening military cooperation with Russia, including its deployment of troops to support Moscow's war against Ukraine.
China and North Korea, which fought together in the 1950-1953 Korean War against U.S.-led U.N. forces, have long described their relationship as that of "blood brothers."
