n an unscheduled welcome 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 dressed in their finest lined the streets to cheer.
"Long life! Long life!" they 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."
Roh urged the neighbors, which remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended only with an armistice, to shed their historical legacy of mistrust.
"It is up to us whether we can play a leading role in establishing a new order of peace in Northeast Asia," he told a dinner hosted by Kim Yong-nam.
"Let's shake off any feelings of distrust and bridge the gap of distrust we have inherited from the past as soon as possible."
In response to Roh's speech, Kim Yong-nam said that the two Koreas are faced with a "sacred" task to further develop bilateral relations, according to Yonhap news agency.
"Inter-Korean relations should be further developed to pave the way for national unification. It's our sacred task," Kim said, according to Yonhap.
