North Korea Ridicules Blinken’s ‘Disgraceful Begging Trip’ to China

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a North Korean government propaganda network, published an angry screed condemning Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China this week as a “disgraceful begging trip” setting America up to be a “loser.”

Blinken visited Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, meeting with multiple senior Communist Party officials, including dictator Xi Jinping. Multiple reporters indicated in January that Blinken was set to fly into China in the first half of the year, but abruptly canceled his trip after Americans identified a Chinese espionage vessel flying over sensitive military sites that month. President Joe Biden allowed the spy balloon, as it came to be known, to fly across the continental United States before shooting it down.

During a brief meeting on Monday, Xi told Blinken that America needed to be more “rational and pragmatic,” urging Washington to “respect China and must not hurt China’s legitimate rights and interests.” Blinken reportedly vowed cooperation on a number of fronts, including “climate change” and “public health.”

“In every meeting, I stressed that direct engagement and sustained communication at senior levels is the best way to responsibly manage our differences and ensure that competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken said, “And I heard the same from my Chinese counterparts. We both agree on the need to stabilize our relationship.”

“As we work to address our differences, the United States is prepared to cooperate with China in areas where we have mutual interests, including climate, macroeconomic stability, public health, food security, counternarcotics,” Blinken told reporters.

Blinken admitted to failing to convince Chinese authorities to restore military-to-military communication with America, which is critical for avoiding misunderstandings and potential clashes, particularly in the South China Sea.

North Korea, one of China’s closest allies on the international stage, condemned Blinken as “shameful” for showing his face in Beijing. Speaking through a state commentator identified as Jong Yong Hak, KCNA accused the Biden administration of attempting “to control, oppose, and isolate China,” only to later demand friendly ties.

“It is the height of the double-dealing and impudence peculiar to the U.S. to provoke first and then talk about the so-called ‘responsible control over divergence of opinion,'” Jong’s opinion read.

“This time,” it continued, “the U.S. secretary of state flew to China to beg for the relaxation of relations, because of the extreme uneasiness that the attempt to press and restrain China may become a boomerang striking a fatal blow to the U.S. economy and that China-U.S. confrontation may trigger off the unprecedented military conflict which can lead to irretrievable disasters.”

“In a word, the U.S. state secretary’s recent junket can never be judged otherwise than a disgraceful begging trip of the provoker admitting the failure of the policy of putting pressure on China,” Jong concluded.

“If one forgets history, one will repeat the same mistake and if one fails to see reality properly, one will make a bigger mistake,” the commentary warned. “If the U.S. persists in its moves to seek hegemony and confrontation in international relations, oblivious of the lesson of history, it will never be able to escape from the fate of the loser.”

North Korea and America remain technically at war, as the Korean War fought between 1950 and 1953 never formally ended with a peace treaty or other tool to cease hostilities. The core of the war was between North and South Korea, with China and America respectively supporting the warring parties, so China and America also remain in a technical state of war as a result.

Blinken claimed following his meetings with Communist Party leaders in Beijing that they addressed North Korea.

“We also spoke about North Korea’s increasingly reckless actions and rhetoric. All members of the international community have an interest in encouraging the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea] to act responsibly, to stop launching missiles, to start engaging on its nuclear program,” Blinken said following his meeting with Xi. “And China is in a unique position to press Pyongyang to engage in dialogue and to end its dangerous behavior.”

In a readout on Blinken’s visit generally, the State Department said that Blinken discussed with Chinese officials “a range of global and regional security issues, including Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the DPRK’s provocative actions, and U.S. concerns with PRC intelligence activities in Cuba.”

On Wednesday, Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters in Seoul that Blinken got the sense from his meeting that “China will also adopt a responsible attitude” towards North Korea as a rogue state. Kritenbrink was in South Korea to update its government on the discussions in Beijing this week, according to the South Korean news service Yonhap.

“We made very clear that we believe that Beijing has both the capability and responsibility to use its influence with North Korea to encourage North Korea to return to the negotiating table,” Kritenbrink said, “and to encourage North Korea to cease its provocative acts, particularly all of the recent missile tests that it has carried out.”

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