North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a cemetery commemorating Chinese troops who fought in the Korean War, including the grave of Mao Zedong's eldest son, state media said Wednesday.
Pyongyang on Thursday will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the signing of the July 27, 1953 Korean War armistice, which ended open hostilities and is marked as Victory Day in the North.
China is North Korea's longtime ally and economic benefactor, with Mao Zedong -- whose son Mao Anying was among those killed -- having once described their relations as "close as lips and teeth".
A high-level Chinese delegation -- led by Politburo member Li Hongzhong -- is visiting the North this week for the festivities, along with the Russian defence minister, the first known foreign visitors since the start of the pandemic.
During Kim's visit to the cemetery, the North Korean and Chinese national anthems were "solemnly played", the Korean Central News Agency reported.
Then Kim "placed a flower before the grave of Mao Anying at the cemetery and paid a tribute to him", it added.
The report described the Chinese as those who "unsparingly dedicated their precious lives to the righteous war of the Korean people".
The US-led United Nations coalition had pushed North Korean forces under Kim's grandfather Kim Il Sung almost all the way back to the Chinese border before Mao -- whose Communist army had won the Chinese civil war only a year earlier -- intervened in October 1950.
Photos released by Pyongyang's KCNA showed Kim, in a black suit, laying a wreath with a red ribbon at the site, officially known as the Chinese People's Volunteers Martyrs' Cemetery.
The wreath's ribbon read: "Martyrs of the Chinese People's Volunteers will Be Immortal".
He was also seen holding a rose to be laid on the graves, flanked by high-level Pyongyang officials wearing military uniforms.
Kim said the Chinese soldier's "sacred struggle" for "accomplishing the cause of anti-imperialist independence and socialism" would be "reliably carried forward through generations", according to KCNA.
- 'Blood alliance' -
Analysts say the visit highlights North Korea's political agenda, as it seeks to strengthen military cooperation with Moscow and Beijing.
"Visiting the grave of Mao Anying has been the symbol of the so-called 'blood alliance' between China and North Korea," Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.
"The visit has been done by three generations of the Kim regime: Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong II and now Kim Jong Un."
The inclusion of the Chinese delegation at this year's celebrations is a post-pandemic first and hints at a new flexibility towards border controls.
North Korea has been under a rigid self-imposed blockade since early 2020 to protect itself from Covid-19, preventing even its own nationals from entering the country.
It only resumed some trade with China last year and allowed new Beijing envoy Wang Yajun to take up his position this year.
He is the first known senior diplomat to cross into North Korea since the border closure in January 2020.