PYONGYANG - At the foot of Moran Hill in downtown Pyongyang stands the China-DPRK Friendship Tower surrounded by pines and cypresses.

Erected in 1959, the monument serves as a symbol of the blood-cemented friendship between the two countries.

China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are neighbors that share strong historical ties. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the DPRK was among the first countries to forge diplomatic relations with China.

To cement and advance their traditional friendship has been a common will of the two parties and governments. On July 11, 1961, the China-DPRK Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was signed, laying a solid legal foundation for establishing long-term friendly cooperation between the two countries.

Over the past 59 years under the guidance of the friendship treaty, the two countries have supported each other and carried out friendly exchanges and cooperation in various fields, making great contribution to advancing the socialist cause in both countries, developing bilateral relations, and safeguarding regional peace and stability.

Over the past decades, China-DPRK friendly cooperation has weathered the tests of international vicissitudes and been further consolidated and developed.

Since March 2018, top DPRK leader Kim Jong-un visited China four times, demonstrating his particular emphasis on developing relations with China.

In June 2019, as the two countries were celebrating the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the DPRK, which was of great significance for the development of bilateral relations in the new era.

In recent years, people-to-people exchanges between the two countries have also thrived. The Chinese government has sent several delegations to visit the DPRK, including a sports delegation, and a literary and art workers delegation.

In July 2019, a group of Chinese medical experts arrived in Pyongyang to offer cataract surgeries that gave sight to the blind and have diagnostic and teaching sessions with their DPRK colleagues.

In September 2019, a cooperation pact was signed to establish a Chinese language center at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, the first Chinese teaching institute set up under bilateral cooperation in the DPRK.

In an article published in July last year to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the friendship treaty, DPRK's state media Rodong Sinmun said the current international environment requires the people of the two countries to carry forward the DPRK-China relations in conformity with the trend of the times.

"Much water has flowed under the bridge and a lot of things have changed. But the truth that the peoples of the DPRK and China have inseparable relations remains unchanged," it said.