“Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans wept and wailed as they lined the major streets of Pyongyang Wednesday despite heavy snow,” South Korea’s Yonhap News reports, “as a hearse carrying the body of Kim Jong Il passed through the capital in a solemn funeral ceremony.”

NPR’s Anthony Kuhn, who is monitoring the news from Seoul, says that “for the first leg of the journey, Kim Jong Un walked at the front of a black limousine with his father’s casket on the roof.” The son, in his late 20s, is set to succeed his father as the nation’s leader. Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17. He was 69.

— NPR