New Delhi, July 10 -- BEIJING - North Korean Premier Pak Thae-song arrived in China on Friday for a three-day state visit, heading a party and government delegation invited by the Chinese leadership to mark the 65th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance - the mutual defence pact that has formally bound the two countries since 1961 and that Beijing has with no other nation on earth.

The visit follows a month in which the China-North Korea relationship has moved at a pace neither side had sustained in years. President Xi Jinping's June summit in Pyongyang - his first visit to the North Korean capital since 2019 - produced what both governments described as a "critical consensus" for entering a new phase...