Unbreakable Kim? China's Xi visits Russia-backed North Korean leader

Unbreakable Kim? China's Xi visits Russia-backed North Korean leader To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Issued on: Modified: It takes convincing these days to get China’s leader to go abroad. Xi Jinping’s just wrapped up what was only his first foreign visit of 2026. Why Pyongyang? Hard to deduce from official readouts of that two-day state visit to neighboring North Korea. Politeness after a pair of visits by Kim Jong Un to Beijing? Celebrations of the 65th anniversary of their mutual defense pact? Or is it those closening ties between North Korea and Russia? Moscow's help in exchange for support in the war against Ukraine followed up by North Korea’s boast of plans to ‘exponentially’ ramp up its nuclear arsenal. We’ll ask about what was unsaid during Xi's visit and whether they're true those claims of a construction boom and growth inside one of the world’s most reclusive states. For instance, is North Korea serious when it talks of developing a tourist industry? And if that growth is for real, how’s China taking the news? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.