South Korean K-pop singers have performed in North Korea for the first time in more than a decade, watched by a crowd of hundreds including the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and his wife, Ri Sol-ju.

It was the first time a North Korean leader had attended a South Korean performance in the north’s capital, Pyongyang. Kim was seen clapping along to some of the songs during the two-hour concert on Sunday, and posed for photographs with the performers afterwards.

“[Kim] showed much interest during the show and asked questions about the songs and lyrics,” South Korea’s culture minister, Do Jong-whan, said after the show.

Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s culture minister, Do Jong-whan, at the concert. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The South Korean delegation including artists, concert staff, taekwondo demonstrators, reporters and government officials travelled to Pyongyang on Saturday in a reciprocal cultural visit after North Korea sent performers to the south in February.

On Sunday the taekwondo demonstrators performed at the Pyongyang Taekwondo Hall, drawing more than 2,300 North Koreans including Choe Hwi, chair of the national sports guidance committee.

The concert, titled Spring is Coming, was held at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre and featured 11 South Korean artists including Cho Yong-pil, Lee Sun-hee, Yoon Do-hyun, Baek Ji-young and the K-pop girl band Red Velvet.

Seohyun, a female vocalist and actress currently with the South Korean group Girls’ Generation, sang a North Korean pop song, Blue Willow Tree. She had performed with the north’s Samjiyon Orchestra in Seoul in February.

Cho sang a string of hits including The Cafe in the Winter, Short Hair and Let’s Go on a Trip. He held a solo concert in Pyongyang in 2005, the last concert by a South Korean artist in the north before Sunday’s performance.

The same South Korean singers will take part in a concert with North Korean performers on Tuesday at the Ryukyung Chung Ju-yung gymnasium, a joint project between the north and south named after the Hyundai Group’s billionaire founder, Chung Ju-yung, who had long advocated inter-Korean cultural and economic exchange.

South Korea’s engagement with North Korea has continued to grow since Kim expressed his willingness for more contact between the two countries. Athletes from North and South Korea marched under a unified peninsula flag at the opening ceremony at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February, and the countries have scheduled their first summit in more than a decade for 27 April.

The two Koreas are technically still at war after the 1950-53 conflict ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace agreement.