Agence France-Presse,
The leaders of South and North Korea opened summit talks Wednesday aimed at ending half a century of hostility amid signs of progress in international efforts to shut down the North's nuclear programme.
With a slight smile on his face, reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il shook hands with President Roh Moo-Hyun before the meeting at the guest house in Pyongyang where Roh is staying.
Kim, who came out in person Tuesday to welcome Roh, thanked the president for crossing the world's last Cold War frontier by land, saying the symbolism was “very meaningful.”
Roh, an advocate of greater engagement with the North, replied: “The people's warm welcome was very impressive and I thank you very much for appearing at the ceremony.”
The two leaders closed a morning session and were due later Wednesday to resume the talks, only the second in the history of the communist North and the capitalist South.
Seoul says peace and prosperity will be the overriding themes of this week's three-day meeting between two nations, which are still technically at war following their 1950-53 conflict.
Progress in six-nation nuclear talks could warm the mood.
The United States said Tuesday it approved an agreement reached Sunday in Beijing, under which North Korea gave a detailed plan to declare and disable its programmes in return for energy aid and diplomatic breakthroughs.
The summit talks began just six days before the first anniversary of the North's atomic bomb test which stunned the world.
But Roh, despite criticism from conservative critics at home, has said the nuclear issue will not top the agenda as it is being tackled elsewhere and might sour the atmosphere.
The usually taciturn Kim managed some small talk Wednesday morning as they met. “Did you sleep well?” he asked the president.
“I had a good night's sleep. The accommodation is very satisfactory,” Roh replied.
Kim, who appeared stiff at Tuesday's welcoming ceremony, also flatly denied rumours he was in ill health, telling Roh that he was “not a patient.”
Roh offered the film buff gifts including some 150 DVDs such as “Joint Security Area,” a South Korean blockbuster thriller about a near-war between the countries.
The two leaders could adopt a joint statement or “peace declaration” late at night, officials said.
Roh, who has doggedly pursued a “sunshine” engagement policy with the North despite its missile and nuclear tests, told a welcome dinner Tuesday that a new era of reconciliation and cooperation was dawning on the divided peninsula.
But any peace declaration would be mainly symbolic. A treaty formally concluding the war, which ended only in an armistice, also needs the signatures of co-belligerents the United States and China.
Joint economic projects to revive the North's crumbling command economy will be high on the agenda. The South's per capita income is almost 17 times higher than the North, where millions rely on international food aid.
Officials say the two sides could agree on participation by the South in massive infrastructure and industrial development projects in the North.
The South Korean leader, possibly accompanied by Kim, is scheduled to pay a controversial evening visit to the Arirang mass gymnastics performance.
Critics say Roh should skip the performance, which involves up to 100,000 students and others staging elaborate flash card tableaux in praise of the hardline communist state and its founder Kim Il-Sung — who invaded the South in 1950.
Seoul says the content has been toned down for Roh's benefit.
Roh will then host a dinner for senior officials from both sides, for which the South Koreans have brought their own food.
Newspapers agreed Kim's greeting was notably more restrained than that he gave Roh's predecessor Kim Dae-Jung in 2000, but could not agree why.
Some speculated that Kim, as Roh's elder by four years, was expected to be more formal than with Kim Dae-Jung, who was his senior. Others said the North Korean leader may be seeking a psychological advantage.
