Warm welcome in Pyongyang for historic Korean summit

[seafan]

Source: Channel NewsAsia

SEOUL : North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il unexpectedly welcomed visiting South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun on Tuesday, raising hopes for a summit aimed at ending half a century of hostility.
Kim, stiff and unsmiling in his trademark military-style brown jumpsuit, greeted Roh with a handshake in the North's capital Pyongyang, where tens of thousands of people in their finest attire lined the streets to cheer.


"Long life! Long life!" the crowd chanted, waving artificial bouquets of the national flower known as Kimjongilia.
Roh, paying only the second visit to Pyongyang by a South Korean leader since the peninsula's division some six decades ago, was originally scheduled to be greeted only by de facto head of state Kim Yong-Nam.


"This is a good sign," a South Korean presidential official told AFP in Seoul.
"With Chairman Kim showing up in person to greet the president, the North side showed its sincerity toward the summit."
In a prepared arrival statement, Roh hailed a new mood of reconciliation between the neighbours which remain technically at war from the 1950-53 Korean conflict.


"Our painful history has reminded us of the importance of peace," Roh said. "Now is the time for the South and North to join hands to establish a new history of peace."
In a carefully choreographed ceremony broadcast live, Roh walked across a yellow strip in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, stepping over the world's last Cold War frontier.
"After I return home, many more people will do likewise. Then this line of division will finally be erased and the barrier will break down," he said.


Tens of thousands of North Koreans waited on roads and waved as Roh's entourage drove into Pyongyang.

Read more: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/303355/1/.html

[AlecBGreen]

1. reconciliation

is a good thing. It shows the world that differences CAN be resolved without war.