NORTH KOREA:The two Koreas meet in Pyongyang today for the first time in seven years, writes Clifford Coonan
The South Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun, will make a historic walk across the border into North Korea for peace talks with Kim Jong-il today, ahead of only the second inter-Korean summit since the peninsula was divided after the civil war in 1953.
The 40m stroll is a powerful symbol of reconciliation ahead of the three-day summit, although with six decades of deep division and bitterness to be overcome, no one is expecting relations to improve too speedily.
"The two Koreas have reached an agreement on Roh walking across the border," South Korean unification minister Lee Jae-joung said yesterday. "Roh will be accompanied by 13 official delegates at the historic moment."
Mr Lee added: "The South Korean government is determined to create an atmosphere for sufficient dialogue between the two leaders."
The two sides are expected to try to come up with a formal peace agreement for the peninsula to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
South Korea is likely to propose massive infrastructure projects for North Korea and they will also discuss efforts to reunite families divided by the war.
The talks come against a backdrop of warmer relations between North Korea, long a pariah of the international community, and the rest of the world.
Under an accord reached in February, North Korea must disable its atomic facilities and make a complete declaration of all its nuclear programmes. In return, the impoverished communist state will receive a massive injection of fuel aid.
Talks in Beijing aimed at working out the nuts and bolts of that agreement ended at the weekend to allow delegates to return to their home countries to discuss a detailed road-map plan worked out by the six countries involved in the talks. Those six were both Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and China.
Mr Lee said: "The two Koreas will actively cope with regional circumstances and solidify a new order for peace on the Korean Peninsula. We'll also work for stable management and development of inter-Korean relations."
The last meeting of the two Koreas was in 2000, when then-president Kim Dae-Jung flew to the North, but Mr Roh's 300- strong entourage will travel overland in presidential vehicles and buses.
The president, first lady Kwon Yang-Suk and the South's 13 official delegates will step out of their cars at the heavily fortified demilitarised zone (DMZ), one of the most famous borders in the world and the last such Cold War divide.
The 4km buffer zone has divided the peninsula since it was created on July 27th, 1953, after a ceasefire. No peace treaty was signed and the two Koreas remain technically at war.
Contact between the two Koreas remains rare - since 2000 there have been occasional emotional reunions for families separated after the Korean War. In May this year, North and South Korea ran the first trains across their border since the 1950-1953 war.
During his stay, Mr Roh will watch the mass games performance of Arirang in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and inspect an car plant and a water lock system in Nampo city.
The Seoul delegation will bring their own food and petrol, as well as satellite dishes so they can watch southern TV, for their trip to the capital.
While they will bring some farming machinery, there are reports in the South Korean media that the delegation will also bring along DVDs of South Korean dramas and films for Mr Kim. The secretive dictator is a movie fanatic, with more than 20,000 foreign films in his private library, and he has also directed a number of films himself, mostly revolutionary propaganda for his revered father Kim Il-Sung.
South Korean pop music and films are popular in the isolated communist country, despite state efforts to weed out "decadent foreign culture and ideals", much as happened when the Berlin Wall divided East and West Germany.