Thousands of North Koreans chanting "welcome Putin" lined the city's wide boulevards brandishing Russian and North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers as Putin commenced his first visit to North Korea in 24 years.
This is a rare overseas trip for Putin since he launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and a key moment for Kim, who has not hosted another world leader in his politically isolated country since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, South Korean military officials said that several North Korean soldiers had been injured or killed in recent landmine explosions near the border, though the exact timing of these incidents was not specified.
Ahead of his two-day visit to North Korea beginning Tuesday, Russian President Vladamir Putin has said that the two countries will together build the security architecture in Eurasia, counter Western sanctions, and establish independent transaction systems.
This comes after Kim Jong Un's influential sister, Kim Yo Jong warned Seoul to halt propaganda broadcasts across their tense border. She warned that the loudspeaker broadcasts risked provoking a "crisis of confrontation."
The US State Department's Principal Deputy spokesperson said that China has a responsibility to "rein in and influence some of the malign and bad behaviour that we are seeing."
In a new move to grapple with its neighbour, North Korea has come up with an idea of using enormous balloons to transport floating sacks of trash containing "filth" across the border, reported CNN.
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on Friday, dismissed allegations of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, stressing that North Korean weapons are solely intended to target Seoul, not for exports to Russia, Yonhap News Agency reported.
The development comes at a time that Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting the Chinese city of Harbin as part of his two-day State visit to China.
In his latest gaffe involving world leaders, US President Joe Biden referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as the 'President of South Korea', the New York Post reported.
Kim, who manufactured and enforced totalitarian propaganda for all three generations of the ruling Kim family, succumbed to multiple organ failures after a year-long illness, according to state media reports. The exact location of his passing remains undisclosed.