CHINESE President Xi Jinping arrived in North Korea today on a two-day state visit.

China’s Xinhua News Agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife Ri Sol Ju welcomed Mr Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan as they arrived at Pyongyang’s international airport. 

Mr Xi later went to Pyongyang’s main square, where a military honour guard and thousands of people, including children carrying balloons, staged a welcoming ceremony. 

Buildings surrounding the plaza were draped in the two countries’ flags and red-and-yellow banners welcoming the Chinese leader and celebrating the nations’ “friendship and unity.”

During the trip, his first visit to North Korea in seven years, Mr Xi is expected to hold a summit with Mr Kim, the general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea. 

It will be their first meeting since September, when they met in Beijing after viewing a military parade alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders.

No specific agenda has been mentioned but both sides are keen to strengthen their traditional alliance in the face of pressures from the United States.

Ahead of the visit, Mr Xi said that he looks forward to meeting with Mr Kim “to discuss the traditional friendship between the two countries, and exchange views on the overall development of bilateral relations.”

Mr Xi made the remarks in a signed article published in Rodong Sinmun, a North Korean newspaper.

The Chinese president said that his country and North Korea “are friendly socialist neighbours who stand by each other and share a common future.”

He said: “No matter how times change or how the international landscape evolves, the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK remains unbreakable and enduring, constantly demonstrating vigorous vitality.”

Mr Xi also said that a shared socialist ideal is a defining feature of China-North Korean relations.

“High-level strategic co-ordination gives China-North Korea relations their contemporary significance. 

“Promoting long-term peace and stability in the region, as well as world peace and stability, is a common pursuit of the two parties, the two countries and their peoples,” he said.