The 1950-53 war between the two sides has never formally ended, but Seoul has promoted hopes for a permanent truce. It says this summit, scheduled to last three days, may pave the way for that historic step.

The BBC said President Roh left the South Korean capital, Seoul, in a motorcade along with business leaders, bureaucrats, poets and clerics. The convoy stopped at the demilitarized zone to allow the president and his wife, to cross into the north on foot.

The South Korean President and his wife traverse a symbolic tape in the DMZ.

They stepped across a yellow plastic tape, printed with the words "peace" and "prosperity."

"I do hope after my crossing that more people will follow suit," said President Roh at the border. "This line will gradually be erased and the wall will fall."

The motorcade was scheduled continue to Pyongyang, the chosen site fo the talks.

The two states' only other summit was held in Pyongyang in 2000. At the time, Kim Jong-il promised to make the return journey to Seoul, but that has never happened, the BBC report stated.

The first summit led to the former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his "sunshine policy" of rapprochement with the North. Since then, rail and road links have been reconnected and families divided between the two countries have been granted reunions, if only briefly.

Critics say the South's attempts at friendship and large donations of aid have failed to break down the impoverished North's isolationism or improve its human rights record, the BBC said.

The BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul stated that some observers doubt whether Kim Jong-il has any appetite for reconciliation. They believe he prefers to keep his military threat to coax further economic aid and other concessions from the nervous South.

 

Roh Moo-Hyun has high hopes  for the summit.

The conservative opposition in South Korea has warned Mr Roh against making any "naive" economic concessions just for the sake of an agreement. "They must know that an emotional approach to the North would bring on disasters," spokeswoman Na Kyung-won said.

One item not on the agenda is North Korea's nuclear weapons program. That is being left for ongoing multi-party talks, which made significant progress over the weekend, the BBC said in its online report.

A joint statement setting out the next step in the  denuclearization progress was agreed, and has been sent for approval to the six governments involved, including the two Koreas.

CNN reported that South Korea's president crossed the Cold War's last frontier on Tuesday in a symbolic walk of reconciliation for talks with his North Korean counterpart.

Exiting his bulletproof black Mercedes, President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula for talks in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Roh became the first leader from either side to cross the border on foot.

CNN says the three-day meeting in Pyongyang, starting Tuesday, will mark the first extended appearance of the enigmatic, authoritarian Kim before the world since the two Koreas' only other summit in June 2000.

The meeting comes at a time of talks over disarmament, with North Korean negotiators set to respond Tuesday to the latest road map.

Last year, the North tested a nuclear bomb, rattling regional stability and leading to a dramatic turnaround in a previously hard-line U.S. policy. Since then, Pyongyang has shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor, which produced material for bombs, and has tentatively agreed to disable its atomic facilities by year-end in a way that they cannot easily be restarted, CNN stated.

CNN reports that on the eve of this week's summit, Roh told graduating military cadets that his goal is to secure peace on the Korean peninsula. "Without the belief of peace, there cannot be joint prosperity or unification between us," Roh said Monday.

"The South-North summit meetings this time will be held in a calm and pragmatic manner," Roh said in a statement issued on leaving Seoul. "If the inter-Korean summit in 2000 can be said to have paved a new path for South-North relations, the summit this time will be able to remove stumbling blocks on the way and hasten the slow march."

CNN says the meeting with the reclusive North Korean leader, announced in early August, was initially scheduled for the end of that month but was postponed after massive flooding in Pyongyang.

Roh Moo-hyun (left) and Kim Jong-il (right) will meet for a second time since 2000.'

It coincides with six-party talks in China's capital, Beijing, on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, which Pyongyang has vowed to disable by the end of the year -- "a step on the way toward complete dismantling," according to Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to those talks.

CNN reports that the Koreas summit also comes in the final months of Roh's scandal-ridden term, and some analysts suspect the South Korean leader is hoping the Pyongyang meeting will boost his sagging approval ratings and help position his party in the upcoming elections against the conservative opposition.

A joint statement following the 2000 summit between Kim Jong-Il and then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung indicated that the next meeting between the Korean leaders would take place in Seoul.

Roh's decision not to push for a meeting outside the North Korean capital was criticized by Bruce Klinger of the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center in a recent article titled, "Seoul's Impetuous Summit Initiative."

"It is indicative of Roh's eagerness that he failed to insist on holding the summit in the Kaesong special economic zone in North Korea to highlight the flagship initiative of Seoul's engagement policy," Klinger wrote.

But one South Korean woman told CNN she believes the summit "is our last chance" to negotiate the freedom of hundreds of Korean prisoners of war and abductees, including her father, a fisherman on a boat believed abducted by the North more than 30 years ago.

"The abductees and POWs are aging, so within five years they might be dead," Choi Sung-yong said.

Other South Koreans have protested the summit -- including one man who set himself on fire during a demonstration in Seoul -- demanding that Roh push North Korea on its human rights violations during the talks.

Instead, the summit is expected to address military tensions, including settling a sea border dispute on the west coast of the Korean peninsula, and economic issues, such as how South Korean businesses can help the North climb out of extreme poverty.

The 2000 summit, part of Kim Dae-jung's policy of engagement with North Korea, paved the way for his Nobel Peace Prize awarded that same year.
South Korean investigators later revealed that Kim Dae-jung paid hundreds of millions of dollars to secure the meeting, the first between Stalinist North Korea and capitalist South Korea.

In his August 22 article, Klinger wrote that "it is unlikely" that Seoul made any secret cash payments for this week's meeting, but noted that "Kim Jong-Il does not cooperate for free."

"The Roh Moo-hyun administration probably offered some inducement, such as new developmental aid or expansion of existing South-North economic projects," Klinger wrote.

** Michael Ireland is an international British freelance journalist. A former reporter with a London newspaper, Michael is the Chief Correspondent for ASSIST News Service of Lake Forest, California. Michael immigrated to the United States in 1982 and became a US citizen in September, 1995. He is married with two children. Michael has also been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station. His weblog appears at: Michael's Wor(l)d BLOG