When North Korea's government told its public about leader Kim Jong-un's upcoming "historic meeting" in Singapore with Donald Trump, the US president, the announcement fell inevitably to Ri Chun-hee .

Mrs Ri, who has been reading the news on North Korean state television since 1971, revealed the news that Kim had landed in the Asian city-state 3,000 miles south of Pyongyang in her usual quavering, triumphant tones.

In a seven minute morning bulletin she told North Koreans that their leader had met with Lee Hsien Loong, the Singaporean prime minister, ahead of a Tuesday meeting with Mr Trump on peace and denuclearisation.

Mrs Ri was last seen in April, announcing another unprecedented meeting between Kim and Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, in the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean Peninsula.

She read out the leader's Panmunjom Declaration in full after the meeting concluded with a bear hug - and said the encounter opened the way "for national reconciliation and unity, peace and prosperity".

State television broadcast several minutes of footage from the meeting, including the leaders' embrace, but with a voiceover throughout.

In the document, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in "confirmed the common goal of realising, through complete denuclearisation, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula".