"We have waited for the summit for 55 years, why can't we wait one more day?" That was the reported reaction of South Korea's President Kim Dae-jung yesterday to North Korea's request for a postponement by 24 hours of the historic Korean summit which was due to begin in the North Korean capital Pyongyang today.
North Korea asked for the delay in a message sent late on Saturday because of "unavoidable technical reasons", the presidential Blue House in Seoul said.
With hopes high in South Korea for a thaw in North-South relations, the delay came as a sharp reminder that nothing can be taken for granted in the planning for the first high-level contact between the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea in their half-century existence. President Kim will now make the 180 km flight to Pyongyang tomorrow for several meetings and banquets with the leader of North Korea, Mr Kim Jong-Il. Signs of an easing of tensions can already be found at the heavily fortified 38th parallel, Korea's "Berlin Wall".
Loudspeakers which recently blasted propaganda messages across the heavily mined demilitarised zone (DMZ) are playing popular music and the showers of leaflets urging South Koreans to defect have stopped.