North Korea’s Kim on unexpected China visit

August 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

JILIN, China

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il turned up in China in a strangely timed visit for the reclusive leader while former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was in North Korea trying to win the release of an imprisoned American.

It marked Kim’s second trip to China in three months — unusual for a man who never flies and travels only by armored train.

South Korean media and regional analysts said he may be seeking Chinese aid after flooding in his impoverished country’s northwest — and could be laying the diplomatic groundwork for the succession of his son, who is thought to be traveling with him.

Late Thursday, a spokeswoman said North Korea has granted amnesty for a Boston man jailed in the communist country since January after Carter worked to negotiate his freedom.

Carter Center spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said the former president was returning to the U.S. with Aijalon Gomes and that Gomes should be in Boston by this afternoon.

U.S. officials billed Carter’s trip as a private humanitarian visit to try to negotiate Gomes’ release.

Gomes was sentenced to eight years of hard labor in a North Korean prison for entering the country illegally from China.

Congileo says North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il granted the amnesty at Carter’s request.

Carter met with Kim’s father, late President Kim Il Sung, on his last trip to Pyongyang in 1994 — a warm meeting that led to a landmark nuclear-disarmament deal.

Neither country announced Kim’s trip to China; his travels typically are not publicized by North Korea until after his return.

But his stop in Jilin city in northeastern China was confirmed by two teachers at the Yuwen Middle School, a school Kim’s father once attended that carries historic and patriotic significance for North Koreans.

“He definitely came over. But I’m not sure if his son was with him or what time he came,” said a physical- education teacher who would give only his surname, Zhao.

Another teacher said Kim visited the school in the morning for about 20 minutes.

Kim Il Sung attended the school from 1927 to 1930 after his family fled the Japanese occupation of Korea. Kim biographies say he began absorbing communist ideology while at Yuwen, making it a pilgrimage site for North Koreans seeking to pay homage to the one-time anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter-turned-president.