Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AP In this Thursday, June 20, 2019, photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, watch a mass gymnastic performance at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Associated Press Friday, June 21, 2019 | 12:20 a.m. BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping offered encouragement for North Korea’s focus on economic development in a speech in Pyongyang, turning to a topic Beijing has long pressed with its communist neighbor amid wider concerns over the North’s nuclear weapons program. In an address at a banquet Thursday night, Xi noted that the nation under leader Kim Jong Un had “initiated a new strategic line of economic development and improving people’s livelihoods, raising socialist construction in the country to a new high tide,” according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. Xi left North Korea early Friday afternoon, Chinese state media reported. An image posted on the mobile app of state broadcaster CCTV showed people waving at his Air China 747 on the tarmac at the airport in Pyongyang. The…