South Korea to hold funeral for ex-leader Kim Dae-jung

A Catholic holds a leaflet featuring a portrait of the late former President Kim Dae-jung during a memorial mass to mourn his passing at the Myongdong Cathedral in Seoul August 22, 2009.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea holds a state funeral on Sunday for former President Kim Dae-jung, a driving force in the country's shift to democracy and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the divide on the Korean peninsula.

Once sentenced to death and the target of assassination attempts during the country's early years under autocratic rule, the man popularly referred to by his initials "DJ" died on Tuesday at the age of 85.

The funeral is scheduled to be held at South Korea's parliament building from 0500 GMT. Organizers said about 24,000 people had been invited to the ceremony.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who shared hugs with Kim Dae-jung at their 2000 summit in Pyongyang that led to a quick warming of ties, sent a delegation of senior officials to the South to pay their respects.

The summit marked the high point of Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy," which was his idea of prodding the North forward with the promise of incentives and reducing the strain of eventual unification through economic integration.

The North Korean envoys, including a senior aide to Kim Jong-il, were due to meet the South's President Lee Myung-bak -- his first high-level meeting with officials from the other side of the border since taking office 18 months ago.

Since Lee took office, relations between the rival Koreas have turned increasingly chilly over his insistence on linking aid to his impoverished neighbor to its moves to end a nuclear weapons progam -- something Pyongyang refuses to do.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz, editing by Jonathan Thatcher)