Haw Haw Haw … “Played like a Fiddle!”

ROFLMAO....Kim Jong-un and President Xi Jinping are plotting the next episode in the ongoing saga of “playing Donald J. Trump like a fiddle!”

from The New York Times....

Kim Jong-un Visiting China for Third Time Since March

The North Korean leader's trip, announced on Tuesday by Chinese state media,
comes a week after his landmark summit meeting with President Trump in Singapore.

By JANE PERLEZ | 11:16PM EDT — Monday, June 18, 2018

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, visited China in March and May this year. Chinese state media reported that he would make
a two-day visit to China starting on Tuesday. — Photograph: Korean Central News Agency/via Reuters.

BEIJING — North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, arrived in China on Tuesday to begin a two-day visit, his third such trip since March.

Mr. Kim's trip comes one week after his landmark summit meeting in Singapore with President Trump.

Xinhua, China's official news agency, announced the visit on Tuesday amid reports that a special flight of Air Koryo, the North Korean state-run airline, was expected to land in Beijing. Mr. Kim's previous trips to China were not announced until after they were over.

Mr. Kim's visit comes as a trade war between the United States and China is intensifying, giving him an opening to play one power against the other — a tactic he appears to be using as the United States presses him to destroy his nuclear arsenal.

“The visit is taking place against the backdrop of the upcoming full-blown trade war,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a Korea expert at Renmin University in Beijing.

On his first visit to China, in March, Mr. Kim arrived to Beijing aboard an armored train, and he spent two days in the capital for talks with President Xi Jinping. In May, Mr. Kim visited the port city of Dalian, also spending time with Mr. Xi.

In recent weeks, Mr. Kim has seemingly reversed years of North Korean foreign policy. Last week he met with President Trump in Singapore, the first time a leader of North Korea and a sitting American president have held talks.

Now, Mr. Kim finds himself in what analysts see as an enviable position, with leverage over the region's two great rivals.

In their joint declaration after meeting in Singapore, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim pledged to move ahead with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But the wording of the agreement has been widely criticized as vague, with no clear timelines.

The Americans insist that sanctions will remain in place until the North completely dismantles its weapons program. But China has suggested that the Singapore meeting alone was a good-will measure than should prompt the easing of sanctions.

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• Jane Perlez is The New York Times bureau chief in Beijing. She writes about China's foreign policy, in particular its relations with the United States and its Asian neighbors. Her first foreign assignment for The N.Y. Times was in East Africa covering civil conflict and famine. She has served as bureau chief in Kenya, Poland, Austria, Indonesia and Pakistan. She was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on June 19, 2018, on Page A9 of the New York print edition with the headline: “Kim in China For 3rd Visit Since March”.

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