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| North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, and President Moon Jae-in clap hands after shoveling earth and pouring water on a sapling from a pine tree at truce village of Panmunjeom, Friday. / Courtesy of Inter-Korean Press Corps |
By Kim Jae-heun
President Moon Jae-in and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un took time before their talks to hold a "tree-planting" ceremony at Panmunjeom, Friday.
They shoveled earth and poured water from the two Koreas on a sapling from a pine tree planted in 1953 ― when the Korean War armistice was signed ― to mark the inter-Korea summit.
The sapling was planted close to where Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung took truckloads of 1,001 cows to the North in 1998.
"The pine is the Korean people's most favorite tree and it symbolizes peace and prosperity," presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok told a press conference in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday.
The two Korean leaders shoveled soil collected from Mount Halla in the South and Mount Baekdu in the North.
Moon and Kim also used water from the Han River in the South and the Daedong River in the North.
Before the inter-Korean summit, the South requested the joint ceremony and the North accepted. The leaders' names are inscribed on a stone in front of the tree.
The ceremony was part of an historic North-South event to break the ice between the two leaders, and show the world the two Koreas' desire for peace on the peninsula.
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