SEOUL, April 28: North Koreans waved flags, plastic flowers and danced in the streets of Pyongyang to welcome the Olympic torch on Monday after the state had promised its main benefactor China an “astonishing” show.

The torch began its two-day journey on the divided Korean peninsula on Sunday, where a frenetic and at times violent pro-Beijing rally in the South Korean capital by thousands of flag-waving Chinese students left many Seoul residents angry.

The global torch relay ahead of the Beijing Games in August has prompted protests against China’s rights record in Tibet as well as patriotic rallies by Chinese who criticise the West for vilifying Beijing.

There was almost no security needed in North Korea, a state human rights groups say kills prisoners in public with firing squads and uses guilt by association to intimidate the masses.

North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, was not on hand for the festivities, but tens of thousands of his citizens put on their finest clothes and cheered on cue as the torch made its journey to the hermit kingdom, according to pool video footage from Pyongyang.

Soldiers played military music, women in traditional garb and men in dark suits danced, pre-school girls rode unicycles and hundreds of North Koreans displayed taekwondo high kicks in unison along the route, the footage for foreign media showed.

North Korea, which the US and others claim has one of world’s the worst human rights records, does not allow rallies that anger Pyongyang’s leaders. Rights groups said the North imprisons or executes anyone who steps out of line.

The images from Pyongyang were in stark contrast to the relay events of London, Paris and San Francisco, where protesters jostled the torchbearers and screamed slogans slamming Beijing’s crackdown in Tibet earlier this year.

An official from the isolated North, which rarely holds international events, was quoted by Xinhua as saying the torch relay would “astonish the world”.

The torch wound its way along a 20-km route that passed monuments celebrating the North’s founder, Kim Il-sung, his son and current ruler Kim Jong-il, and the ideology behind Asia’s only communist dynasty.

The torch next goes to Vietnam and then Hong Kong.

—Reuters