S. Korea's Roh Enters The North For Summit

Views differ as to what Kim hopes to gain from the Pyongyang summit, which is only the second North-South presidential meeting in the more than half a century since the Koreas waged an all-out war that still is not over officially. The last meeting occurred seven years ago, when Kim met with President Kim Dae Jung. Afterward, the South Korean leader was criticized for having approved secret payments to the North valued at about $186 million -- payments that bought him the historic summit.

This time, the South Korean government is saying it will not make inappropriate payments or concessions. But Roh's advisers are making no secret of his desire to invest generously in infrastructure and free-trade zones.

"Paying money as a matter of extortion is one thing, but making investments in the future of the country is another," said Moon Chung In, a political science professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who advises Roh and is attending the summit.

As for Kim's motives, many scholars and politicians agree that he is hoping to use the feel-good theatrics of a summit to influence public opinion in the South, where a substantial slice of the population hopes for a unified Korea eventually.

If Roh's party were to win the presidential election, Kim's government would be likely to get more money on better terms from the South. The North's economy of about $26 billion last year amounted to about 3 percent of the $900 billion economy of the South.

"The whole point of this summit for Kim Jong Il is to extract as much aid as possible," said Lee Doo Won, a professor of economics at Yonsei University who has studied the North for many years.

Lee said that in the past five years the ability of the communist state's centralized economy to deliver food and other essentials has all but collapsed. This has weakened its stranglehold on the lives of North Koreans, Lee said, as chronic hunger and gross inequality in living standards have increased.

"North Koreans admit they have reached the end of the rope in dealing with their problems in their obsolete way," said Koh Yu Hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

This week's summit and North Korea's newfound willingness to talk with the United States about dismantling its nuclear program, Koh said, are signs that Kim is frantically looking for resources to keep his government afloat.

An alternative theory -- about why Kim agreed to the summit and why he is showing signs this year of wanting to negotiate an end to his country's nuclear program -- has been floated by a Roh adviser.

"From Kim Jong Il's point of view, everything depends on the United States," said Moon, the professor accompanying Roh this week.

Moon said the Bush administration, by branding the North an "evil" country and refusing to hold bilateral talks for seven years, had convinced Kim that his country was at risk of being attacked by the United States. In effect, Bush motivated Kim to explode a bomb last year, Moon said.

But since that test, Moon said, Kim has come to believe that the Bush administration takes him seriously, and he is now willing to abandon his "military first" policy to pursue economic development that can preserve his power.

Moon noted that this week's summit does not include the one party that "has the master key to the North Korea problem: the United States."

Special correspondent Stella Kim contributed to this report.