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North Korea's ruling family dug in on the country's nuclear identity early Sunday, with Kim Jong-un's sister declaring that Pyongyang's arsenal is beyond negotiation, hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to begin a two-day state visit that has placed the peninsula's nuclear standoff squarely back in the diplomatic spotlight.
Kim Yo-jong, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the North Korean leadership, said her country's standing as a nuclear-armed state is "absolutely irreversible" and that its weapons program is not subject to international denuclearization efforts.
The statement, carried by North Korean state media and reported by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, amounts to a preemptive rejection of any pressure Xi might carry to Pyongyang on behalf of Washington.
Xi's visit to North Korea, his first in nearly seven years and the first of 2026 outside China, begins Monday at Kim Jong-un's invitation. It comes weeks after Xi hosted both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing in separate, back-to-back summits, positioning the Chinese leader as a central figure in an increasingly tangled web of great-power diplomacy.
After Trump's Beijing summit, the White House said the two presidents reaffirmed a shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea. Beijing, however, has been considerably more guarded. Chinese officials have acknowledged working in "its own way" toward a "political settlement" of the nuclear issue without elaborating on the substance of those efforts.
Kim Yo-jong's statement Sunday drew a sharp line around what Pyongyang will accept as a basis for any talks. By framing the nuclear program as nonnegotiable, North Korea appeared to be signaling to Beijing, and indirectly to Washington, that it will engage diplomatically only on its own terms, not as a candidate for disarmament.
The declaration also lands at a symbolically charged moment. Xi's trip coincides with the 65th anniversary of the 1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, the only mutual defense treaty China holds, signed less than a decade after Chinese forces fought alongside North Korean troops in the Korean War.
For Xi, the visit is as much about reasserting Chinese influence as it is about nuclear diplomacy. In recent years, Kim has deepened ties with Moscow, sending troops and conventional weapons to support Russia's war in Ukraine and signing a mutual defense pact with Putin during the Russian leader's 2024 visit to Pyongyang.
China has long viewed North Korea as a strategic buffer on its border and has historically prioritized stability there over the goal of denuclearization. How warmly Kim receives Xi, and what concessions, if any, emerge from the talks, will be closely watched against the backdrop of Putin's own high-profile reception in Pyongyang two years ago.
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