By Ko Dong-hwan

Mao Xinyu, left, became the youngest Major General of the People's Liberation Army of China, according to Chinese newspaper Ming Pao in Hong Kong, August 2010. / Korea Times file

Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong's only grandson Mao Xinyu was possibly killed in a bus crash in North Korea in April that killed over 30 Chinese, according to a report from French radio.

Xinyu, the son of Mao Zedong's second son Anqing who died fighting in the Korean War, was possibly one of 32 Chinese tourists who died when a bus fell from a bridge in North Hwanghae Province, Radio France Internationale's Chinese version reported on April 30, citing a Chinese source.

The report said Xinyu, a Major General in the People's Liberation Army of China, and most of the other Chinese tourists were the children of Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War.

The accident also killed four North Koreans.

The tourists died reportedly on their way back from a cemetery in Hoechang County in South Pyongan Province that was for Chinese soldiers who died during the Korean War. Mao Zedong's eldest son Anying was buried there, which leads to the supposition Xinyu could have visited the cemetery to pay tribute to his uncle.

If it is true that Xinyu was among the dead, two direct descendants of Mao Zedong have perished on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a high-profile visit to a hospital where two injured Chinese tourists from the accident were receiving treatment. Kim also visited the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang and met Ambassador Li Jinjun, expressing his "bitter sorrow" over the deaths of the Chinese tourists.

North Korean state-run KCNA news agency highlighted Kim consoling the accident's survivors, seeing off a train repatriating bodies of the dead Chinese to Beijing, and making an official apology to China for the accident. Kim's rare moves following a local accident and the state media outlet's coverage of him doing this reflected the importance China carries for North Korea as the communist state's biggest ally.