North Korea’s Kim calls Winter Olympics ‘great victory’ for China | Al Jazeera

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sent a message to Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulating him on the Beijing Winter Olympic Games as a “great victory” and saying he wants to improve relations between their countries, according to state news agency KCNA.

“The successful opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics despite the worldwide health crisis and unprecedented severe circumstances is another great victory won by socialist China,” Kim said in the letter, KCNA reported on Friday.

Kim said that he would “steadily develop the relations between the two parties and the two countries to a new high stage”.

He said the ties between the two countries “have been cemented into invincible strategic relations that can never be broken by anything in the struggle for defending and advancing the common cause”.

The Winter Olympics are due to open in Beijing later on Friday.

The United Nations Security Council will meet the same day to discuss a record month of North Korean missile tests, including the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Sunday, the first test of that type since 2017.