North Korea's official media confirmed on Friday leader Kim Jong-il had visited China while a report in a South Korean daily said he pledged to return to stalled international talks on ending his atomic ambitions, Reuters reported.
The North's KCNA news agency said Kim visited China's industrial centers of Dalian and Tianjin but its first report on the journey made no mention of whether he had gone to Beijing to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao for a summit with his impoverished state's biggest benefactor.
The North's media usually does not report on Kim's rare trips abroad until he has safely returned home, which indicates he was back in Pyongyang from a visit started on Monday when his special armored train crossed into China.
Kim told Hu at a meeting in Beijing that his country was prepared to return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks, South Korea's JoongAng Daily quoted various sources as saying.
Kim, seen by media in China with thinning hair and a limp, was taking his first trip abroad since a suspected stroke in 2008 in a visit seen as an attempt to win economic aid after his country slid deeper into trouble after being hit by U.N. sanctions for last year's nuclear test.
"Party and state leaders and people of China accorded with utmost sincerity warm welcome and cordial hospitality to leader Kim Jong-il who visited China again for boosting the DPRK-China friendship," the North's official KCNA news agency said.
DPRK is short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Kim had been reported to have reached Beijing on Wednesday for talks with Hu focused on Beijing's help for propping up his country's crumbling economy in return for a pledge to return to the nuclear disarmament talks that it had boycotted since 2008.
China hosts the talks which include South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia.
Kim's visit had "disappointed" Seoul, unhappy that China had rolled out the red carpet just weeks after the sinking of a South Korean warship in a deadly attack widely thought to have been launched by the North, a senior official in Seoul told Reuters.
Kim's much wealthier southern neighbor is now grappling with how to respond to the sinking in late March of its navy ship which killed 46 sailors. It is widely suspected to have been hit by a North Korean torpedo.
Kim's last visit to China in 2006 brought effusive promises of economic cooperation between the two neighbors, and vows from the North Korean leader to seek progress toward "denuclearization." But both goals have sputtered.
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