Moon Landing: S. Korean Leader And North's Kim Begin Summit

South Korea's president and the North's leader Kim Jong Un drove together through the streets of Pyongyang Tuesday past thousands of cheering citizens before opening a summit where Moon Jae-in will seek to reboot stalled denuclearisation talks between his hosts and the United States.

Seoul, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Sep, 2018 ) :South Korea's president and the North's leader Kim Jong Un drove together through the streets of Pyongyang Tuesday past thousands of cheering citizens before opening a summit where Moon Jae-in will seek to reboot stalled denuclearisation talks between his hosts and the United States.

Kim and Moon embraced at Pyongyang's international airport -- where the North Korean leader had supervised missile launches last year as tensions mounted.

The North's unique brand of choreographed mass adulation was on full display as hundreds of people waved North Korean flags and another depicting an undivided peninsula -- while the South's own emblem was only visible on Moon's Boeing 747 aircraft.

Thousands of residents, holding bouquets and chanting in unison "Reunification of the country!", lined the streets as Kim and Moon rode through the city 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 -- and Kim later began their formal talks.

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".

Moon 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 first visit by a South Korean president to Pyongyang in a decade is also the two leaders' third meeting this year after previous summits in April and May in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

Moon has been instrumental in brokering the diplomatic thaw that saw a historic summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, where the North Korean leader backed the denuclearisation of the peninsula.

But no details were agreed and Washington and Pyongyang have sparred since over what that means and how it will be achieved.

The US is pressing for the North's "final, fully verified denuclearisation", while Pyongyang wants a formal declaration that the 1950-53 Korean War is over and has condemned "gangster-like" demands for it to give up its weapons unilaterally.

A commentary in the Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the North's ruling party, repeated the criticism 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'."