Kim Jong Un Tours Chinese Bus Factory, Climbs Aboard as UN Sanctions Bar Vehicle Supplies to North Korea

Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, toured a bus factory in Dandong, China, on Saturday and boarded a bus there, footage showed. UN sanctions require every UN member state to prohibit supplying, selling, or transferring transportation vehicles to North Korea, except for spare parts needed to keep its existing commercial civilian passenger aircraft operating safely. China voted for that ban in 2017, and Wang Huning, its fourth-ranked official, hosted Kim.

A tour breaks no rule, because the ban covers the supply, sale, or transfer of vehicles, not visits. Even so, Kim stood inside a plant making goods China agreed not to send across the border. Saturday's trip follows Xi Jinping's June state visit to Pyongyang.

Inside the Dandong Bus Plant

Kim crossed into Dandong over the New Yalu River Bridge on Saturday morning, according to North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Builders finished the 3-kilometre (1.86-mile), four-lane road bridge to North Korea's Sinuiju about 12 years ago. It only opened on 15 October. The day trip was Kim's sixth to China since he became leader in late 2011. His first stop was a memorial to Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War.

In the afternoon, Kim and Wang inspected the factory's production workshop and listened to a briefing, China's embassy in the US said. KCNA identified it as a bus production line at Huanghai Automobile, a Dandong maker of buses and commercial vehicles. Video also showed Kim touching components as he toured the plant. He told its engineers and workers he hoped the factory 'will achieve even greater results,' the agency reported.

What Resolution 2397 Bans

Security Council members passed Resolution 2397 by 15 votes to none on 22 December 2017, after North Korea fired a Hwasong-15 long-range missile. Law firm Clifford Chance called the measure the Council's third that year over North Korea's weapons programmes. Every member state must stop sending industrial machinery, transportation vehicles, and metals such as iron and steel to North Korea. The caps also limit North Korea's imports of crude oil and refined fuel, as the graphic below shows.

China backed the resolution. In March 2018, it told the UN sanctions committee it had banned exports of vehicles, machinery, and metals to North Korea. Clifford Chance also said in 2017 the resolution's success would depend most on how China and Russia applied it. In March 2024, Russia vetoed the renewal of the UN expert panel that tracked breaches, while China abstained. The panel's mandate expired on 30 April 2024, but the sanctions remain in force.

What Kim May Want From the Visit

Yang Moo-jin of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies told South Korean broadcaster SBS that Kim may have asked China for bus supplies, or help assembling them. Some analysts link the stop to possible Chinese group tours to the Wonsan-Kalma beach resort.

Hwang Tae-yeon of the Korea Institute for National Unification said North Korea will seek to 'raise its external bargaining power and strategic autonomy' through links with China and Russia, Seoul Economic Daily reported. In February 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Kim a car that South Korea said breached sanctions, which Russia disputed.