North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has travelled to China over a newly opened bridge, his first known trip abroad in more than a year, according to South Korean officials.
Mr Kim arrived on Saturday in the Chinese border city of Dandong, in Liaoning province, after taking a train from Pyongyang to the North Korean city of Sinuiju and crossing the New Yalu River Bridge, a South Korean government source told the Yonhap news agency.
Chinese premier Li Qiang met him there, Reuters reported, citing another South Korean official.
The trip was not announced in advance, and neither Pyongyang nor Beijing had confirmed it by Saturday evening. China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The visit comes a day before China marks the anniversary of its entry into the 1950-53 Korean war on the North's side. Traffic controls were imposed around the bridge and near a museum devoted to China's role in the war, and nearby hotel bookings were restricted, Kyodo news agency reported on Saturday. Diplomatic sources told Kyodo the measures were linked to a visit by a senior North Korean official.
Mr Kim was expected to return to North Korea after the visit, Yonhap reported, and a South Korean official told Reuters it was unlikely he would travel on to Beijing before high-level Communist Party meetings begin there on Monday.
The 3km bridge, the two countries' most significant land border crossing, opened in mid-October, 12 years after China finished building it, after being held up by delays on the North Korean side. It is meant to revive trade after years of strained ties and pandemic-related disruptions, and to help move the heavy equipment, raw materials and energy products that North Korea needs for development.
In early September, North Korea and Russia opened the first road bridge across their own short border, leaving Pyongyang newly linked by road to its two main backers.
It is Mr Kim's sixth visit to China and his first since September 2025, when he attended a military parade in Beijing alongside the Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Mr Xi made a state visit to Pyongyang in June, his first trip there in seven years, and the two leaders have held two summits in the past 13 months.
A visit now is consistent with a phase of closer economic ties and more frequent high-level exchanges, said Lu Chao, an expert on China-North Korea relations at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, a Chinese government think tank in Shenyang.
"The opening of the bridge has resolved a major bottleneck in China-North Korea trade logistics," he told Reuters. "With the logistics constraint eased, bilateral trade is likely to increase further."
Christopher Green, a Korea specialist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said the crossing itself carried weight.
"Kim has given his imprimatur to bilateral trade by crossing the New Yalu River Bridge to enter China," he said. "That bridge was for more than a decade a symbol of how dysfunctional bilateral relations could become."
China, which fought alongside North Korea in the war, is Pyongyang's main economic and diplomatic backer and accounts for most of its official trade. North Korea has drawn closer to Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which analysts say has reduced its reliance on Beijing.
Relations with South Korea have meanwhile deteriorated. Mr Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, has issued about 10 statements criticising Seoul since late September, a frequency South Korea's unification ministry has called unusual, and has announced plans to resume loudspeaker broadcasts at the border within days.
Mr Xi will host the Apec summit, a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November, which the US president, Donald Trump, is expected to attend and which has fuelled speculation about a meeting between Mr Kim and Mr Trump. Reuters reported on Friday that US and South Korean officials see little chance of the two meeting this year.
