South Korean President Moon Jae-in left Tuesday for Pyongyang for a summit with top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un, a live broadcast at the Seoul press center showed.
Moon took a helicopter to the Seoul Air Base outside of Seoul from the presidential Blue House to shun a traffic jam during the morning rush hour.
An airplane carrying Moon and his entourage, including presidential secretaries, cabinet members, businesspeople, lawmakers and entertainers, departed for the DPRK's capital city at around 8:50 a.m. local time (2350 GMT Monday).
It would fly directly across the western inter-Korean sea boundary to the Pyongyang International Airport, where a welcoming ceremony is set to be held.
Moon and his entourage, composed of over 150 delegates, are slated to arrive in Pyongyang at about 10 a.m. local time.
It will mark the third time in less than five months that the leaders of the two Koreas sit down face-to-face. Moon and Kim met for the first time on April 27, and held their second meeting on May 26.
Moon is scheduled to stay in Pyongyang for three days till Thursday. His visit will be for the third Pyongyang summit between the two Koreas, with the first and second ones held in 2000 and 2007 respectively.
Moon said Monday that he aimed to have lots of frank talks with the DPRK leader during his three-day Pyongyang visit in a bid to defuse military tensions across the inter-Korean border and facilitate the DPRK-U.S. dialogue for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
