A high-ranking North Korean official has returned from a rare visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the two sides discussed the North's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons, the North's official media reported on Tuesday.

Ri Su-yong, vice chairman of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party of Korea and former foreign minister, held talks with Henri Mova Sakanyi, secretary general of the People's Party for the Reconstruction and the Democracy of DR Congo, on Sunday, the North's Korean Central News Agency reported.

In recent months, senior North Korean officials visited African nations in what appeared to be a bid to break out of a deepening isolation following its fourth nuclear test in January this year.

During the talks, Ri briefed his African counterparts on the outcome of North Korea's once-in-a-generation party congress, which endorsed the North's policy of simultaneously pursuing both nuclear weapons and economic development, the KCNA reported.

Ri "clarified the validity of the WPK's line of simultaneously pushing forward economic construction and the building of nuclear force and stressed the consistent stand of the WPK to achieve the reunification of the country on the principle of national independence," the report said.

The DR Congo secretary general "expressed the full support for the independent policy" of the North Korean ruling party, according to the report.

Ri visited Beijing in late May and held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 1 in an apparent bid to mend frayed political ties between the allies. (Yonhap)