Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan, who are visiting North Korea, paid respects at the China-North Korea Friendship Tower on Tuesday morning. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and his wife Ri Sol Ju accompanied them.
Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan arrived by car at the Friendship Tower located at the foot of Mount Moranbong at around 10:40 am, where Kim Jong Un and Ri Sol Ju greeted them. Politburo Standing Committee member and Director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee Cai Qi, as well as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and others also attended the event.
Kim Jong Un introduced Xi Jinping to historical materials, photographs, and oil paintings inside the Friendship Tower that depict the Chinese People's Volunteer Army fighting alongside the North Korean people and rebuilding their homeland together. Xi Jinping also perused the roster of fallen volunteer soldiers and introduced Kim Jong Un to information about the volunteer heroes who gave their lives.
According to reports, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un both agreed that the days when China and North Korea fought together in the 1950s are an everlasting part of shared history, and that both sides should jointly preserve memorial facilities for the volunteer martyrs, carry out distinctive revolutionary tradition education and youth moral education, so that the great spirit of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea can be carried forward, and the great traditional friendship between China and North Korea can be passed down for generations.
Afterwards, accompanied by Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping visited the Central Cadres School of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The two observed classroom teaching, toured the campus, and jointly planted a fir tree. Reports say the evergreen fir symbolizes the perpetuity of China-North Korea friendship.
In the presence of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, Cai Qi and Kim Jae Ryong, member of the Political Bureau Standing Committee and Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, unveiled the commemorative plaque for the tree. The front of the plaque is inscribed in both Chinese and Korean with the words "China-North Korea Friendship Forever Green."