South Korean President Kim Dae-jung will return in triumph to Seoul today after concluding a breakthrough accord with the North Korean leader, Mr Kim Jong-il, that marks the first major breach in the Cold War psychology dividing the Korean peninsula.
The historic agreement came after two hours and 20 minutes of talks on the second day of the first North-South summit in the Northern capital, Pyongyang, and was signed last night. The two leaders then raised their clasped hands together in triumph, before toasting the achievement in champagne. The agreement, welcomed with a joy approaching ecstasy in Seoul, said that Mr Kim had accepted an invitation to visit Seoul at an "appropriate time" in the future, thought to be sometime in early autumn.
While there is little prospect of the militarised border along the 38th parallel now crumbling like the Berlin Wall, a new era of trust between the two Koreas seems to have been launched, a point underlined by a clause of the agreement saying that reunification should be a matter for Koreans alone.
The accord has far-reaching consequences for the politically repressed 23 million population of North Korea, who have yet to be told even that President Kim is in Pyongyang, and for the economy of South Korea, where major industries are poised to invest heavily in the North.
Technically still at war, the two countries are beginning the reunification process with hugely symbolic steps.
They are discussing a proposal that the two countries' athletes march together at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney under the Olympic flag and the national Olympic committee flags of North and South Korea. At a banquet which he hosted last night in Pyongyang, President Kim Dae-jung said, "I hereby report that the summit talks have been successful . . .I give my deepest respect to Kim Jong-il and the North Korean people for achieving this successful outcome".
He added: "The sun is rising at last for national reunification, reconciliation and peace," and "if our people concentrate our energies together, we will push our nation into the first rank of countries in the world."
Officials in Seoul disclosed that the agreement covered reconciliation and eventual unification, relaxation of tensions, the reunion of some of the estimated seven million divided families, and exchanges in economic, social, cultural and other fields.
Mr Kim Jong-il recently praised China's capitalist-style reforms, and has embarked on a round of international diplomacy. Both indicate a significant shift away from Pyongyang's policy of juche, or self-reliance.
Also, for the first time the leaders of North and South have put their signatures to a joint agreement, in an extraordinary mood of determination and good-fellowship unmatched in any earlier dealings.