hankyoreh

The North Korean leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay got off to a peaceful start Monday with thousands of citizens enthusiastically waving pink paper flowers and Chinese flags, news reports said.

It marked the Olympic torch's first run in the reclusive North.

Kim Yong-nam, head of the North's rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly who acts as ceremonial head of state, presided over a ceremony to mark the start of the leg, according to the Associated Press.

No trouble has so far been reported unlike the torch's other legs elsewhere in the world.

Pyongyang has supported its closest ally China's hosting of the Summer Olympics and criticized worldwide demonstrations against the Beijing Olympics. Protests over China's human rights record and crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet have dogged the torch's relay across the world that began in Athens, the Greek city where the Olympic Games originated. Earlier in the day, Radio Pyongyang said such demonstrations are "an open challenge to the spirit and charter of the Olympics."

Kim passed the torch to the first runner Pak Du-ik, the North Korean soccer striker who led his national team to the quarter finals of the 1966 World Cup, the AP said.

Thousands more cheering people lined Pyongyang's city streets waving pink paper flowers and the national flags of the North and China as well as small flags displaying the Beijing Olympics logo, as Pak began the 20-km route through the North Korean capital, according to news reports.

The Choson Sinbo, the newspaper of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said Monday Jong Song-ok, the North's marathon heroine, will be the last of the North's 80 torch runners. The group was composed of 56 North Koreans, including three residents in Japan, and 24 Chinese people, it said.

The flame arrived in Pyongyang's Sunan Airport before dawn aboard a chartered flight from South Korea over the West Sea.

In Seoul, scuffles broke out between Chinese students and anti-Chinese protesters. Several people were arrested for trying to disrupt the relay, according to police here.

The torch is to leave for Vietnam in the evening after finishing the Pyongyang leg.

SEOUL, April 28 (Yonhap)