North Korean leader Kim Jong Il repeatedly pushed for summit talks before his death in 2011 - but demanded US$10bn and huge shipments of food and fertiliser in return, South Korea's former president has said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the snowy streets of Pyongyang today, wailing and clutching their chests as a black hearse carrying late leader Kim Jong Il’s body wound its way through the capital for a final farewell.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans rallied in their capital to condemn the United States and South Korea on the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, while Seoul told Pyongyang to admit responsibility for a deadly warship sinking.

TENS of thousands of mourners filled the lawn outside parliament for the state funeral yesterday of ex-president Kim Dae-jung, a longtime defender of democracy and advocate of reconciliation, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reach out to communist North Korea.

North Korean officials visited South Korea’s National Assembly for the first time today in a symbolic gesture of reconciliation with their democratic rivals during joint celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.