North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been spotted in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

Two major Japanese dailies and Kyodo News Agency on Friday said they photographed his arrival at the five-star White Swan hotel and quoted a hotel employee as seeing Kim.

A source in Guangzhou said an Air Koryo flight landed in the city Friday afternoon and is still there.

Reports said that Kim's entourage might have flown into the city Thursday and that Kim, who refuses to fly, could have taken a train there Friday morning.

Kim's official itinerary is not yet confirmed, but is known to follow the 1992 visits of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to Wuhan, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

The head of Guangzhou's Communist Party studied in the North and speaks Korean, and a Pyongyang trade office is also close to the hotel.