Kim returns home amid conflicting forecasts for China-N.K. economic ties

SEOUL, May 27 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il returned home Friday after concluding a weeklong trip to China reportedly designed to promote bilateral economic and diplomatic relations.
Kim's special train crossed the China-North Korea border into the North's border city of Sinuiju earlier in the day after a 6,000-kilometer-long journey that took him to China's northeastern and prosperous eastern areas and Beijing.



The special train departed from Beijing on Thursday afternoon after Kim held summit talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on the previous day. It arrived at China's northeastern border city of Dandong at 5:30 a.m. Friday via Shenyang before heading for the North Korea border at 6:30 a.m., apparently after a one-hour farewell ceremony.
Kim called for a quick resumption of the long-stalled talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs during his summit talks with Hu in Beijing on Wednesday, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.
But Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) gave a toned-down account, saying that Kim and Hu recognized that a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff through dialogue, including the resumption of the nuclear talks, and the "elimination of obstructive elements" conform to the overall interests in the region.
The KCNA did not elaborate on what the "obstructive elements" mean.
Also Wednesday, North Korea's top diplomat renewed Pyongyang's commitment to revive the disarmament-for-aid talks that Pyongyang quit in 2009.
North Korea "is making efforts to quickly resume the six-nation talks by cooperating with parties concerned," North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun said in a conference in Indonesia, according to the North's state broadcaster, which was monitored in Seoul.
The North has repeatedly expressed its interest in returning to the talks, but its refusal to take responsibility for its two deadly attacks last year on South Korea has hindered diplomatic efforts to revive the talks that also include South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
South Korea and the U.S. have urged Pyongyang to first take concrete steps demonstrating its denuclearization commitment before resuming the nuclear talks.
Seoul has also demanded the North first apologize for last year's attacks that claimed the lives of 50 South Koreans.
Meanwhile, two planned groundbreaking ceremonies that would have marked China's additional investment in North Korea have been abruptly canceled, an indication that the two sides have differences on the projects.
The two sides had been scheduled to hold a ceremony for a joint project to turn Hwanggumpyong, an island in the Yalu River near the Sinuiju-Dandong border, into an industrial complex, according to a source.
Another ceremony in Rason, the North's free trade zone on the northeast, was canceled.
The North designated Rason as a special economic zone in 1991 and has since striven to make it become a regional transportation hub near China and Russia, but no major progress has been made.
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