Kim Jong-il likely to visit China

North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong-Il is likely to visit China within a day or two, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said yesterday, quoting an unnamed government source.

He "has not crossed into China yet, but it appears highly likely that his Chinese trip would come either today or tomorrow as a considerable level of preparations have been done," the source told Yonhap.

The news agency said in a separate dispatch from China's border city of Dandong that police were beefing up security at some hotels which overlook a railway bridge over the Yalu River linking to North Korea.

Guests were being evicted from the hotels in the presence of security police, and reservations are cancelled or banned until today, it said.

"We have detected such signs in Dandong, and we are closely monitoring situations," a Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Officials at the National Intelligence Service, Seoul's main spy agency, were not immediately available for comment.

Mr Kim's trip to China had been widely forecast by South Korean and Japanese media for around late April, but it did not go ahead as predicted.

Seoul's YTN television reported yesterday that Mr Kim's trip might have been pushed back due to the heavy outside media exposure and safety concerns.

North Korea's number two leader Kim Yong-Nam met with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Friday on the sidelines of the World Expo in Shanghai but it was not known what they discussed.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been rising since the mysterious sinking of a South Korean warship near the disputed sea border with North Korea on March 26, with suspicion falling on Pyongyang.

Mr Kim, who reportedly dislikes flying, previously travelled by train to China in 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2006.

Analysts say Mr Kim's trip, if it goes ahead, would be aimed at seeking badly needed economic aid from China, and the North in return may feel bound to return to long-stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks hosted by Beijing.

China is North Korea's major ally and its most important source of food and energy. The North angrily quit the talks in April last year and vowed to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium. It carried out its second atomic weapons test the following month.

Pyongyang says it will not go back to the nuclear dialogue until UN sanctions are lifted, and until the US makes a commitment to hold talks on a formal peace treaty.

North Korea had agreed in previous rounds of the six-nation talks to end its nuclear weapons drive in return for security guarantees and badly needed fuel assistance.