North Korea's reclusive leader Mr Kim Jong-Il, travelling by train for a historic summit in Moscow, arrived in the Siberian city of Omsk yesterday and was quickly taken off to a guest house. Dressed in a beige outfit, the 59-year-old Stalinist dictator was escorted by North Korean security officials as Russian guards cleared a path in front.
A group of North Korean journalists were allowed onto the platform, where President Vladimir Putin's regional envoy, Mr Leonid Drachevsky, and other top officials greeted him briefly.
In Omsk, Mr Kim's motorcade drove towards the provincial administration's official guest house, where the North Korean leader rested briefly before leaving for the Omsk State Music Theatre to attend a concert in his honour.
At Pyongyang's request, the repertoire included mainly military and folk ensembles.
Mr Kim is scheduled today to tour the giant TransMash defence plant, which produces T80 tanks - several dozen of which Pyongyang's capitalist arch-rival, Seoul, purchased in the mid-1990s.
Mr Kim is due to hold summit talks with the Russian President in the Kremlin on Saturday at which the two may sign a new military agreement between the former Cold War allies.
Earlier yesterday, Mr Kim offered gifts to the widow of a Russian officer who in 1946 saved his father's life, as his train passed through the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Ms Maria Novichenko (82) was waiting for Mr Kim at the platform with five of her children, but he did not come out of the train during the 20-minute stop. Instead, his representative handed Novichenko a suitcase of gifts from Kim and assured her that the North Korean leader would meet her on his way back from Moscow.
On March 1st, 1946, Yakov Novichenko, on military service in North Korea, caught a grenade which an assailant threw at the platform where Kim-Il Sung was standing.
Novichenko, standing nearby, covered the grenade with his body to protect Communist North Korea's founding father. The explosion caused serious wounds to the Russian officer: his arm was torn off and his eye was damaged but he survived.