Pyongyang mission for Monash student

Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending a special envoy to North Korea tomorrow.

Song Tao, a Monash University graduate, will brief the North Koreans on last month’s five-yearly communist party national congress. Picture: AP

Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending a special envoy to North Korea tomorrow, after US President Donald Trump ended his Asian tour, to rally support to end the Kim regime’s nuclear program.

Yesterday’s sudden announcement said only that Song Tao, a Monash University graduate, would brief the North Koreans on last month’s five-yearly communist party national congress.

But Mr Song, 62, head of the international liaison department of the communist party, is travelling to Pyongyang after talks between Mr Xi and Mr Trump.

Standing alongside Mr Xi in Beijing last week, Mr Trump said of North Korea: “China can fix this problem easily and quickly, and I am calling on China and your great president to hopefully work on it very hard”.

Mr Xi responded that China was ready to discuss the “pathway leading to enduring peace and stability on the peninsula”.

Although North Korea is China’s only formal ally, Beijing’s push to be the leading power in Asia is being prominently defied by Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Mr Trump said in Vietnam on Sunday that Mr Xi “is upping the sanctions against” North Korea, but no further details have emerged.

Mr Xi has visited Vietnam and Laos in the past week, reporting on his party’s new plans to communist counterparts. That leaves Cuba and North Korea as the only communist states yet to be briefed.

North Korea’s “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un sent Mr Xi a message of congratulation at the end of the congress, wishing him “great success”.

“The Chinese people have entered the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era,” he said.

Kim, who six years ago succeeded his father Kim Jong-il as leader, has never met Mr Xi.

Mr Song was educated and spent his early career in Fujian province, where Mr Xi worked and from where some of his most trusted lieutenants have come.

He studied at Monash in Melbourne from 1988 to 1991.

He was ambassador to Guyana and The Philippines, before heading the Foreign Ministry’s discipline inspection agency, and then becoming a vice-minister before two years ago being promoted to head the party’s international division.

Mr Song accompanied then Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan to Pyongyang two years ago, to attend the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Workers’ Party. Mr Liu was the most senior Chinese official to have direct contact with North Korean counterparts since Kim came to power. Mr Liu met Kim and told him China was willing to work with him towards the resumption of international nuclear talks, but there appears to have been no response.