South Korean President Moon Jae-in has arrived in North Korean capital Pyongyang for his third summit this year with Kim Jong-un as he seeks to reboot stalled denuclearisation talks between North Korea and the United States.
Mr Kim welcomed his visitor at Pyongyang's international airport, where he supervised missile launches last year as tensions mounted, the two men embracing after Mr Moon walked down the steps of his aircraft.
Accompanied by their wives, they exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes ahead of a military welcome ceremony as hundreds of people lining the tarmac cheered, waving North Korean flags and unification ones showing an undivided peninsula.
But the South's own emblem was only visible on President Moon's Boeing 747 aircraft.
"Let's open an era of peace and prosperity with the solidarity of one people," read a hoarding displayed outside the terminal.
The nuclear-armed North invaded its neighbour in 1950, starting the Korean War, although it now regularly stresses the importance of reunifying with the now far wealthier South.
Mr 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".
The first visit by a South Korean leader to Pyongyang in a decade is also the men's third meeting this year after two previous summits in April and May in the Demilitarised Zone that divides the peninsula.
Mr Moon has been instrumental in brokering the diplomatic thaw that saw a historic June summit in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and Mr Kim who backed denuclearisation of the Korean 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.
The dovish South Korean president will hold at least two meetings with the North's leader, where he will try to convince Pyongyang to carry out substantive steps towards disarmament.
"If this visit somehow leads to the resumption of the US-North Korea talks, it would be significant enough in itself," he was quoted as saying before departure.
But analysts played down expectations.
