DPRK Minister of Foreign Affairs Ri Yong Ho will travel to Beijing for a two-day state visit later this week, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.

In a tweet citing the country’s foreign ministry, Chinese ruling party organ the People’s Daily said Ri will stay in Beijing from Thursday to Saturday, on the official invitation of local counterpart Wang Yi.

The news will see Ri add another leg to an ongoing international tour, which has so far taken him to Vietnam and, it is widely expected, Syria.

The North Korean foreign minister last Friday met with Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Phạm Bình Minh, in a visit which raised speculation that Pyongyang may be interested in learning from Hanoi’s economic development model.

He is then believed to have departed on Sunday for a visit to Syria, where he and local counterparts may be seeking to iron out arrangements for a planned summit between DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and President Bashar Al-Assad.

The trip has seen North Korea’s top diplomat round off a busy year which has seen him visit, among others, China, Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan.

The Beijing meeting will also represent Ri’s fifth with his Chinese counterpart this year: the two previously met and held talks in April, May, August, and September.