It was a hot and humid morning in Seoul. Kim Dae-jung came out of the main door of the Blue House, then the official residence of the president of South Korea, together with his wife, Lee Hee-ho. The two of them climbed into the presidential limousine. Their driver took them to Gimpo International Airport, then the main airport in Seoul and South Korea, while tens of thousands of South Koreans lined up the streets to bid them farewell. At the airport, Kim delivered a message to his fellow South Koreans: the date is 13 June 2000, and the South Korean president is about to fly to Pyongyang for a summit meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-il. This was to be the first inter-Korean summit since the partition of Korea into two. Following 52 years of formal separation after centuries of existence as a single country, it was a momentous occasion.

After a short flight from Seoul to Pyongyang, Kim Dae-jung and his delegation held a successful summit with Kim Jong-il and his officials. The South Korean president spent a total of three days in North Korea. Kim Jong-il treated his South Korean counterpart with great respect and spent significant time alone with him. The two Koreas issued the North–South Joint Declaration on 15 June, at the end of the summit. In the declaration, they promised to achieve reunification independently, to pursue it via a federation or confederation formula, to facilitate exchanges between families separated during the Korean War, to promote economic and other type of cooperation and to engage in dialogue to implement the points agreed. The declaration also included an invitation for Kim Jong-il to visit South Korea. South Koreans were ecstatic. Reconciliation between the two Koreas was at hand. Many thought that even reunification would follow in a relatively short period of time. And indeed, economic cooperation in the form of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and regular family exchanges ensued. So did political, economic, cultural and sports exchanges. While there is no way of knowing what ordinary North Koreans thought about the summit and declaration, we can assume that they too were hopeful that reunification may have soon beckoned.