South Korea's president and the North's leader Kim Jong Un drove through the streets of Pyongyang together past thousands of cheering citizens Tuesday ahead of a summit where Moon Jae-in will seek to reboot stalled denuclearisation talks between North Korea and the United States.
Kim welcomed his visitor at Pyongyang's international airport -- where he had supervised missile launches last year as tensions mounted -- the two leaders of the divided Korean Peninsula embracing after Moon walked down the steps of his aircraft.
The North's unique brand of choreographed mass adulation was on full display as hundreds of people on the tarmac waved North Korean flags and unification ones depicting an undivided peninsula.
The South's own emblem was only visible on Moon's Boeing 747 aircraft. Thousands more people, holding bouquets and chanting in unison "Reunification of the country!", lined the streets of the city as Kim and Moon rode through in an open-topped vehicle, passing the Kumsusan Palace where Kim's predecessors -- his father and grandfather -- lie in state. The nuclear-armed North invaded its neighbour in 1950, starting the Korean War, and regularly stresses the importance of reunifying with the now far wealthier South.
Moon -- whose own parents fled the North during the three-year conflict -- is on a three-day trip, following in the footsteps of his predecessors Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and mentor Roh Moo-hyun in 2007.
The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the summit "will offer an important opportunity in further accelerating the development of inter-Korean relations that is making a new history."
A commentary in the Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the North's ruling party, repeated the description Tuesday, saying Washington was "totally to blame" for the deadlock and adding: "The US is stubbornly insisting on the theory of 'dismantlement of nukes first'."
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