Koreas Summit Featured Oddly Congenial Kim

Another North Korea expert, Baek Seung Joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a government-funded research group in Seoul, said Kim changed a long-held position by promising to work alongside South Korea in seeking a formal peace treaty.

"Kim Jong Il has been refusing to recognize South Korea as a relevant entity in ending the war," Baek said. "So it is significant to South Korea that Kim finally gave that recognition through the declaration."

Still, the North Korean leader was characteristically hard to pin down on many issues. Roh said he tried to get Kim to promise to come to Seoul for another summit. "Why don't we have Kim Young Nam pay you the return visit this time, and I will come to Seoul when the time is ripe," said Kim, according to Roh's account. Kim Young Nam is the No. 2 official in the North.

After the last summit, Kim Jong Il promised in writing to come to Seoul for another summit but did not show.

This week's summit also focused close attention on Roh, a lame-duck leader whose poll numbers have plummeted in the past year. There is a presidential election in the South in December, and Roh's many critics accused him of using the summit as a way to pump up the popularity of his ruling party, which has yet to choose a presidential candidate.

After the summit, Roh was criticized for not securing the release of South Koreans who have been abducted and taken to the North over the years -- and of prisoners still not returned home after the Korean War.

"It was disappointing that President Roh is returning home empty-handed," said Kim Woo Sang, an international relations professor at Yonsei University.

Disappointing, perhaps, but not surprising. Roh's aides had made it clear that he was not going to use the summit as an occasion to pester Kim about human rights or nuclear weapons.

From his four hours of sitting across a summit table from Kim, Roh said he learned something important about the North Korean leader: He really does not like to be lectured by outsiders about his country's need for political openness and economic reform.

Roh, indeed, seems to have had an epiphany on this point. "I realized that one-way communication can lead to unnecessary misunderstanding," he said. "We should try to avoid making such misunderstanding by not going on and on with reform and opening-up to North Koreans."

This epiphany, though, is likely to come to nothing. Roh leaves office early next year.

The likely next president of South Korea, according to opinion polls, is Lee Myung Bak, a former mayor of Seoul and candidate of the Grand National Party.

Lee said this week in an interview with The Washington Post that he would not approve major investment in North Korea unless Kim's government moved toward openness and reform.

Special correspondent Stella Kim contributed to this report.