Something unusual happened at the railway station in Shenyang yesterday afternoon. Armed police arrived and shooed people away from the platform. The entrances were sealed. The main rail lines around the industrial northern city were cleared. Then at 3 p.m., a special closed train raced through, travelling east.
This morsel of information, communicated by a station official, helped confirm rumours sweeping Beijing yesterday that the world's most reclusive leader, Mr Kim Jong-il of North Korea, had been to the Chinese capital on a secret visit and was returning home.
The magnitude of this event can be gauged from the fact that - as far as anyone knows - this is the first time Mr Kim has crossed the border of his Stalinist state in 17 years, certainly the first time since he became head of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) after the death of his father, Kim Ilsung, in 1994.
Foreign Ministry officials in Beijing refused to confirm or deny that the visit had taken place, but the evidence multiplied.
Several employees at China's leading computer-maker, Legend, said the DPRK leader dropped by the company's offices in Beijing's computer district, known as "Silicon Valley", though a Legend Group spokesman denied what his own workers were saying.
Then a witness told an agency reporter that Mr Kim arrived in Beijing's Diaoyutai State Guest House on Monday with an entourage of 50 or 60 officials and left yesterday for the train station.
The railway line from Beijing to the DPRK capital, Pyongyang, runs through Shenyang, where the official confirmed that a mysterious special train had also passed through on Monday, heading for Beijing. Intrigued diplomats in the Chinese capital speculated that the unannounced visit was connected with the June 12th-14th summit between North and South Korea in Pyongyang, the first meeting between the two sides since the suspension of the 1950-1953 Korean War. The possibility that Mr Kim was discussing with his Chinese allies the meeting with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was taken in South Korea as a sign that he intended to raise substantial issues at the summit. China, which normalised relations with the DPRK in 1992, has supported the Korean dialogue.
Recently it has stepped up patrols on the border with North Korea and forced thousands of refugees fleeing famine to return to uncertain fates.
The China venture is the boldest step by the 58-year-old "Great Leader" in tentatively opening up to the world. On March 5th he "crashed" a diplomatic reception at the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang, the first foreign mission he visited in the DPRK capital since the then Soviet embassy in 1985.
His last known foreign trip was a low-key, 12-day visit to China in 1983. North Korea this year established diplomatic ties with Italy and Australia. Yesterday the official Korean Central News Agency said that talks with British officials, held in Pyongyang from May 16th to 20th, were held in "an atmosphere of mutual understanding and confidence".
As it falls behind other Asian countries in every sphere of development and struggles to cope with severe food shortages, Pyongyang appears keen to end its Cold War isolation and even establish diplomatic ties with arch-enemies, such as the US and Japan. Also yesterday, three truckloads of telecommunications and other equipment for the summit entered North Korea at Panmunjom, the UN truce village along the Demilitarised Zone that divides the peninsula and which is almost never opened to traffic.