On Sunday 20,000 politicians, dignitaries and ordinary South Koreans turned out for the state funeral of president Kim Dae-jung - only the second-ever in the south's history - in Seoul.
As a giant portrait of President Kim on a shrine surrounded by flowers looked over a sea of mourners, South and North Korean officials were holding their first face-to-face talks in years.
President Kim, who died on Tuesday from heart failure aged 83, made rapprochement with the north the priority of his 1998-2003 administration, bearing fruit with a direct meeting with Pyongyang's supreme leader Kim Jong-il in 2000, the same year he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
His immediate successor as president, Roh Moo-Hyun, kept up this Sunshine policy, but incumbent president Lee Myung-bak reversed it, signalling a steep decline in south-north relations.
Since President Lee assumed office two years ago the north has pulled out of six-party talks, resumed uranium enrichment and, in May of this year, conducted an underground nuclear test and begun test-firing missiles over Japan.
But hope that a ten-year low in relations between the two countries could be reversed was provided by a North Korean delegation travelling to Seoul to pay their respects to the late president.
On Saturday the envoys, including a close aide of Kim Jong-il, met with the south's unification minister. A spokesman said it was unlikely that President Lee would host the delegation.
A day later, however, President Lee emerged from a 30-minute meeting with the Pyongyang delegation at the presidential Blue House in Seoul.
Kim Jong-il's message relayed to the president was too sensitive to reveal, a spokesman said.
He revealed in the talks that President Lee had reiterated his 'consistent and firm North Korea policy'.
But, in a quote directly attributed to the president, the spokesman added: 'There is no issue that the south and the north cannot resolve if they talk with sincerity.'
North and South Korea officially remain at war; the agreement that ended the Korean war in 1953 being an armistice and not a truce.
Nine years after a South Korean leader met the supreme leader of the north for the first time and six days after his death, commentators say President Kim's dream of reunification still lives on.
As a giant portrait of President Kim on a shrine surrounded by flowers looked over a sea of mourners, South and North Korean officials were holding their first face-to-face talks in years.
President Kim, who died on Tuesday from heart failure aged 83, made rapprochement with the north the priority of his 1998-2003 administration, bearing fruit with a direct meeting with Pyongyang's supreme leader Kim Jong-il in 2000, the same year he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
His immediate successor as president, Roh Moo-Hyun, kept up this Sunshine policy, but incumbent president Lee Myung-bak reversed it, signalling a steep decline in south-north relations.
Since President Lee assumed office two years ago the north has pulled out of six-party talks, resumed uranium enrichment and, in May of this year, conducted an underground nuclear test and begun test-firing missiles over Japan.
But hope that a ten-year low in relations between the two countries could be reversed was provided by a North Korean delegation travelling to Seoul to pay their respects to the late president.
On Saturday the envoys, including a close aide of Kim Jong-il, met with the south's unification minister. A spokesman said it was unlikely that President Lee would host the delegation.
A day later, however, President Lee emerged from a 30-minute meeting with the Pyongyang delegation at the presidential Blue House in Seoul.
Kim Jong-il's message relayed to the president was too sensitive to reveal, a spokesman said.
He revealed in the talks that President Lee had reiterated his 'consistent and firm North Korea policy'.
But, in a quote directly attributed to the president, the spokesman added: 'There is no issue that the south and the north cannot resolve if they talk with sincerity.'
North and South Korea officially remain at war; the agreement that ended the Korean war in 1953 being an armistice and not a truce.
Nine years after a South Korean leader met the supreme leader of the north for the first time and six days after his death, commentators say President Kim's dream of reunification still lives on.
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