China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit North Korea this week

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit North Korea this week, his office said on Monday, days after the leaders of the two Koreas held a landmark summit.

Wang, who is also a State Councillor in China’s cabinet, will be in the neighbouring country at the invitation of his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho on Wednesday and Thursday, the foreign ministry said in a brief statement.

He will be the first Chinese foreign minister to visit the North since 2007, but Beijing has relied more on its Communist Party diplomatic agency to engage Pyongyang in recent years.

China has backed a series of United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programme, but Beijing is likely to be eager to avoid being marginalised in the wave of diplomacy that has led to last Friday’s historic summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in.

Kim and Moon agreed to pursue the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula.