The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, gave two white hunting dogs, of the Korean Pungsan breed, to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, after celebrating a historic summit in Pyongyang in which the Kremlin leader offered his interlocutor a presidential limousine made in Russia.

Kim presented the dogs to Putin while they took a walk in the garden of the Kumsusan Guest Palace, where the Russian leader stayedand after signing a key agreement in the continuation of their bilateral relations, as detailed by the North Korean state agency KCNA.

Putin, known for his passion for dogs and who has received this type of gift from numerous leaders in the past, appears reaching out to the two animals and together with a very smiling Kim in images broadcast today by KCNA. The Russian president, who has at least four dogs, including a Japanese Akita given by Tokyo and named Yume, would have thanked Kim for the gift, according to the same source.

Pungsan dogs are a national symbol for North Korea and come from the Kaema Plateau, where they were used for hunting, while now they are a rare breed that also reaches other countries such as China as smuggled. According to Korean legends, it is such a powerful hunting dog that it would be able to hunt a tiger, in addition to being adapted to mountainous regions and having a noble temperament so it would never attack its owners.

Kim had already made this gift in 2018 to former South Korean president Moon Jae-in during their summit in 2018, and his father, Kim Jong-il, to former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, during the inter-Korean summit in 2000. Kim’s gift towards Putin took place in the context of a summit in the North Korean capital that marked the first visit of the Moscow president to the secretive country. in more than 24 years.

Putin, for his part, sent Kim a Russian Aurus-type presidential limousine, a gift that would violate a UN Security Council resolution banning the supply of luxury goods to North Korea. Russian and North Korean media broadcast photographs and videos of both leaders taking turns driving inside the vehicle and exchanging gestures of complicity and smiles.

In the context of the meeting in North Korea, the leaders signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement” which replaces the bilateral agreements sealed until now by Moscow and Pyongyang, and which requires both parties not to sign pacts with third countries that infringe the fundamental interests of the other or participate in such acts.