Korean leaders meet in the North

Riding dreams of Korean reunification and hoping to nudge history forward, South Korean President Roh Moo- hyun journeyed to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, today to open a three-day summit that drew the North’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, into a rare appearance before a global audience.

Looking slightly tired and with his trademark beige worker’s suit straining around his belly, Kim greeted the more nattily dressed Roh with a handshake in the expansive square outside Pyongyang’s April 25 Cultural Hall.

Kim ambled past the honor guard, ushering the stiffer Roh to a small podium as a military band played a march and a grandstand of men in dark suits and women in long, colorful dresses broke into synchronized cheers. The crowd waved long-stemmed flowers overhead like pompoms.

Kim remained unsmiling throughout the short welcome ceremony. But the enthusiasm of the crowds that lined the streets of Pyongyang to cheer as Roh rode past, standing in an open-air car, seemed to please the South Korean leader, who has gambled his legacy and the fate of his government’s North Korean policy on a successful summit. Roh’s deeply unpopular presidency ends early next year, and South Korea’s conservative opposition party, which favors a tougher line on North Korea, has a huge lead in the polls.

Roh had eagerly sought this summit -- only the second that leaders of the two countries have had in more than half a century -- as a way to show tangible gains from his government’s “sunshine policy,” which calls for greater engagement, rather than confrontation, with the North. And he raised expectations for a breakthrough with Kim, saying he hoped the summit would lay the foundations for a peace deal that would formally end the Korean war.

The 1950-53 war ended in a cease-fire, an agreement to which the South Korean government was not a signatory, and left the peninsula divided along a border bristling with weapons.

Roh made the trip from Seoul to Pyongyang by land, driving north and emerging from his limousine at the border in the demilitarized zone to make the crossing, symbolically, on foot.

“I’m saddened that in front of my eyes I see nothing, yet this line has divided our people for half a century,” he said in remarks broadcast live on national television as he stood on the empty highway that runs across the border.

“I am now crossing this forbidden line.”

Roh was expected to offer a package of incentives that could boost the North’s economy, and make reunification eventually possible between the suffering Stalinist nation and its far wealthier neighbor. Among the expected enticements is an offer to create a new economic zone in a deep-water port in North Korea.

But the summit also comes at a sensitive stage in the broader negotiations over the fate of North Korea’s nuclear program, known as the six-party talks. Those talks have temporarily adjourned in Beijing while negotiators brief their governments on details of a deal aimed at getting Kim to halt and dismantle his nuclear programs.

There is concern that Roh’s obvious eagerness for a summit success might tempt him to make economic concessions to Kim that could undermine the wider deal on denuclearization. The six-party process is based on rewarding North Korean disarmament with economic aid.

There is also palpably less enthusiasm in the South than in 2000, when Kim Dae-jung, Roh’s predecessor, flew to Pyongyang amid giddy celebrations for the only previous meeting between leaders of the two nations.

Roh’s visit has drawn a more muted reaction at home, tempered by disappointment that the first summit led to only modest gains and revelations that Kim Jong Il’s participation then had been sealed with a roughly $500-million gift.

Some economic links have since developed between the South and the specially designated economic zone at Kaesong in the North. And some Korean families that were separated by the war have been able to reunite under a program sponsored by the two governments, though demand still far outstrips the number of arranged visits.

But the barriers never fully crumbled as people in both nations had hoped. Kim has not made a return visit to Seoul as promised, and his regime continues to be accused of egregious human rights violations. In addition, North Korea ramped up its nuclear program, joining the club of nuclear nations with a partially successful test explosion last year.

Critics in South Korea were also angered by Roh’s agreement to attend the Arirang festival during his visit to Pyongyang. Held in a massive public stadium, Arirang is an artistic and gymnastic performance that pays homage to an intensely nationalistic view of North Korean history. It portrays Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, as messiahs who saved the country from its enemies, including South Korea and the United States.

Roh’s advance team attended a performance last week and said they found it inoffensive, noting that organizers had removed references to the glory of the North’s nuclear program. But some critics say the performance itself is a human rights scandal because it forces young, even pre-teen gymnasts and dancers to train intensely for months.

Others note that there are far graver human rights abuses in North Korea. Human rights activists point to the 480 South Koreans still listed by Seoul as having been abducted by the North, and to the South Korean prisoners of war still held by Pyongyang or unaccounted for. And they are angry that Roh, who was a human rights lawyer before his political career, has been coy about whether he will raise the matter with Kim.

“Like many Koreans, I am full of hope for a successful summit, but at the same time I doubt there will be much difference from the previous one,” said Do Hee-youn, head of the Citizens’ Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees. “Peace will be realized only when Roh discusses human rights, South Korean abductees and POWs.”

Neither Roh nor his advisors have mentioned human rights while discussing the summit agenda. Instead, the president has signaled he will be “realistic” in his dealings with the North Korean dictator and vowed before leaving to “concentrate on making substantive and concrete progress.”

Aides also tried to ward off charges that they were muddying the waters at the six-party talks. They insisted that the president would stay in step with the U.S., China, Russia and Japan on the nuclear issue. Roh’s concept of a “peace regime” was not a route to parallel negotiations over the North’s nuclear program, they said.

“ ‘Peace regime’ is a very broad term that embraces a wide variety of issues,” said South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-jung on Monday. “It is not something that can be resolved between two parties.”

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bruce.wallace@latimes.com