ELUSIVE PEACE
Roh's meeting with Kim on Wednesday coincides with a day of commemoration in both states marking the legend of the foundation 4,300 years ago of the Korean nation.
That nation was ripped apart after World War Two, when U.S. and Soviet troops occupied the two halves of the peninsula. Millions later died in the fratricidal 1950-53 Korean War, for which a peace treaty has yet to be signed.
Roh, with just five months left in office, has said his priority is to bring peace to the peninsula and may seek to sign some sort of peace statement with the North.
South Korea's ability to seek a peace treaty is limited because it refused to sign the 1953 armistice agreement. The pact was signed in its stead by Washington on behalf of the United Nations Command, grouping forces of more than a dozen countries who had battled the North Korean and Chinese armies.
U.S. President George W. Bush has said he is ready to discuss a peace treaty once the reclusive North scraps its nuclear arms and so removes one of the region's greatest security threats.
Officials said Roh may propose new projects to rebuild the North's infrastructure and develop joint economic zones where its manufacturers could further exploit cheap land and labor.
Many analysts say the Seoul government is less fearful of the North's military threat it has lived with for decades than of its neighbor's collapse and the impact that would have on its own economy, Asia's fourth largest.
That in turn means that Seoul sees spending billions on the gradual rehabilitation of the North Korean economy as in its own best interests. Several top businessmen are among the 200 or so South Koreans who traveled with Roh to Pyongyang.
Roh is expected to witness one of the North's typical mass games extravaganzas featuring goose-stepping soldiers, dancing schoolgirls and a large flip card animation section that promotes unification under the North's communist banner.
He returns to South Korea on Thursday.
