Top North Korean leaders made a surprise trip to South Korea on Saturday, with the rivals holding their highest level face-to-face talks in five years.

After months of tension expectations for any breakthrough were low, but the visit itself was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Seoul’s senior official for North Korean affairs.

The divided neighbours have exchanged a steady stream of insults in recent weeks, and North Korea has fired an unusual number of missiles and rockets.

The North Korean delegation, ostensibly for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in Incheon, was led by Hwang Pyong-so, the top political officer at the Korean People’s Army and considered by analysts to be the country’s second most important official after Kim.

Rumours have swirled in the South about the health of Kim, who has made no public appearances since 3 September and skipped a high-profile recent event he usually attends. A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping and overweight and mentioned his “discomfort”.

The two sides met briefly in the morning. Unification ministry spokesman Lim Byeong Cheol told reporters that the North Korean officials would hold their main talks over lunch with South Korean unification minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and national security director Kim Kwan-jin before flying home later on Saturday.

It is the first senior visit of this kind to the South since president Park Geun-hye took office in early 2013. The last such trip was in 2009. It wasn’t clear what the officials talked about. Lim said there were no plans for the North Koreans to meet Park.

The other North Korean officials, Lim said, were Choe Ryong-hae and Kim Yang-gon, secretaries to the ruling Workers Party. Hwang, the No. 2, holds other top posts, such as a vice chairman of the powerful National Defence Commission, led by Kim, and is a vice marshal of the army.

One South Korean analyst saw the talks as a crucial moment for inter-Korean ties over the next few years.

Cheong Seong-chang, of the private Sejong Institute, speculated that the North Korean officials were probably carrying a message from Kim. The visit could also be part of an effort to show that Kim had no problem making high-profile political decisions and had no serious health problems, he said.

High-level North Korean visits to South Korea have been highly unusual in recent years. Besides the recent North Korean test firings of rockets and missiles, both sides have levelled harsh criticism at each other, with North Korean state media calling Park a prostitute.

North Korea’s participation in the Asian Games was welcomed as a step forward.

It boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 summer Olympics, both in Seoul, but attended the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, the 2003 University Games in Daegu and the 2005 Asian athletics championships in Incheon. Those last three came during an era of liberal governments in Seoul that were more accommodating to Pyongyang.