Kim Jong Un Tours Chinese Bus Factory, Climbs Aboard as UN Sanctions Bar Vehicle Supplies to North Korea

In March 2018, Beijing told a Security Council committee it had prohibited industrial machinery and metal exports to Pyongyang (Credit: Kremlin.ru / CC BY 4.0, cropped)

Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, toured a bus factory in Dandong, China, on Saturday and boarded a bus there, footage showed. UN sanctions require every UN member state to prohibit supplying, selling, or transferring transportation vehicles to North Korea, except for spare parts needed to keep its existing commercial civilian passenger aircraft operating safely. China voted for that ban in 2017, and Wang Huning, its fourth-ranked official, hosted Kim.

A tour breaks no rule, because the ban covers the supply, sale, or transfer of vehicles, not visits. Even so, Kim stood inside a plant making goods China agreed not to send across the border. Saturday's trip follows Xi Jinping's June state visit to Pyongyang.