North Korea holds memorial service for Kim Jong-il
BBC's Lucy Williamson said the scale of the memorial was a show of strength that the country was still in safe hands
Kim Yong-nam, formally the number two leader, gave an address as Kim Jong-un, Mr Kim's designated successor, watched.
State media described him on Thursday as the "supreme leader of the party, state and army".
A three-minute silence was also held, after which trains and ships throughout the country sounded their horns.
Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack on 17 December, aged 69, state media said. He had ruled North Korea since the death of his father Kim Il-sung in 1994.
Kim Jong-un (in buttoned black overcoat) bows at the memorial in Pyongyang "The great heart of comrade Kim Jong-Il has ceased to beat... such an unexpected and early departure from us is the biggest and the most unimaginable loss to our party and the revolution," Kim Yong-nam told the crowd.
North Korea would "transform the sorrow into strength and courage 1,000 times greater under the leadership of comrade Kim Jong-un", he said.
Half-mast
On Wednesday, thousands stood weeping and wailing in the snow as Kim Jong-il's funeral cortege passed, images from state television showed.
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The young Kim Jong-un will have the backing and guidance of his uncle, Chang Song-taek, a senior figure in the leadership who is married to Kim Jong-il's sister, Kim Kyung-hee - a general in her own right.
Will the new team try to keep the lid on North Korea as firmly as his father did? It is much too early to tell, but it is a historical truism that a dictatorship is at its most vulnerable when it tries to ease up.
Yet if North Korea maintains its ferocious grip on the lives of its citizens, there is always the possibility that they will finally be pushed too far.
People who visited Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania as late as the summer of 1989 believed that the ferocity of his rule had wiped out the very instinct for personal freedom among ordinary people. But by late December that year they had risen up, and he and his equally tough wife had been executed.
It is a great deal easier to set up a dictatorship than to change the way it operates.
Analysis
Will the new team try to keep the lid on North Korea as firmly as his father did? It is much too early to tell, but it is a historical truism that a dictatorship is at its most vulnerable when it tries to ease up.
Yet if North Korea maintains its ferocious grip on the lives of its citizens, there is always the possibility that they will finally be pushed too far.
People who visited Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania as late as the summer of 1989 believed that the ferocity of his rule had wiped out the very instinct for personal freedom among ordinary people. But by late December that year they had risen up, and he and his equally tough wife had been executed.
It is a great deal easier to set up a dictatorship than to change the way it operates.
Correspondents say the ceremonies echoed the displays of pomp and military might that marked the death of Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
Kim Jong-un - Mr Kim's third son - cried as he walked alongside the hearse. Tens of thousands of soldiers lined up to bow their heads in homage in the city's main square.Kim Jong-un - who is thought to be in his late 20s and who has little political experience - was accompanied by his uncle, Chang Song-taek.
Mr Chang is expected to be a key player as the younger Kim consolidates power.
Kim Jong-il - known in North Korea as the "Dear Leader" - was in the process of formalising Kim Jong-un as his successor when he died.
However, the transition was not complete, leaving regional neighbours fearful of a power struggle in the nuclear-armed pariah state.
Mr Kim's two older sons, Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chol, were not seen at the funeral.
No foreign delegations have attended any of the events. However, UN offices around the world lowered their flags to half-mast.
A spokesman at the UN headquarters in New York said that the move had been requested by Pyongyang's UN mission but was part of normal protocol for the funeral of any head of state.
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